Four Weddings and a Funeral

Four Weddings and a Funeral was made in 1994.  It has been around so long and is so familiar that I had a feeling I might have seen it already, but I finally was convinced that I had not, and Netflix kept recommending it, so I watched it.

I have always liked Hugh Grant as a comedic actor, and I'm also a sucker for romantic comedies, so somehow, with those good elements going for it, I think I expected to be let down by this movie.  Instead I was surprised at how much I liked it.

The story is nothing too unusual.  Boy meets girl, boy and girl are very attracted to each other, but there's a problem; otherwise the movie would be over quite quickly.  In this case, she lives in America, and he lives in England, and the second time they meet, she is engaged to someone else.

Pretty standard stuff.  What you hope for then, since the plot itself is pretty familiar, is that the humor is well written, the laugh lines are funny.  This movie delivers that and more -- the dialogue is very clever, the cast is great, the characters are delightful, and there are some more somber scenes (yes, the funeral is one) that are genuinely touching.  Through it all, Grant is at his very best, wisecracking in his understated style, and deliberately mistranslating for his deaf brother in some of the funnier moments of the film.

So just in case anyone besides me has not yet seen this film, I would definitely suggest that you do so.