One of the less brilliant Hugh Grant movies (of which there are numerous), featuring memorable dialogues such as the following:
Woman: Your skin is so white. I want to be white too. But it's not possible, is it?
Hugh Grant: Maybe with some powder?
The character, an English engineer trapped in India, is possibly the least suitable role for the posh Hugh Grant. He is brilliant as Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility, Clive Durham in Maurice, William Thacker in Notting Hill and even Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones' Diary.
English nobleman and licentious skirt-chaser bring the best out of Hugh Grant. He should never appear in dirty basketball shirt out of city slums, nor inelegantly walking on a dirt road with pants obviously too short for him.
Equally discrepant is the plot. There is a crazy journalist character, and many times you are left clueless as to what a particular scene is trying to convey. In all, it is only for the sake of HG do one endure such a disastrous movie.
Can't-miss funny video of HG's earlier endeavors.
But Maurice is the complete opposite. Only 27 years old (though he looked as if he's 20), Hugh Grant plays a rich student at an English private school in the early 1910s. Candle lite dinners, canoeing on river while talking about "the whole Western culture is based on the law of Christ, not Plato" and beautifully lying on green grass with his lover are the scenes that naturally bring home the charm of the Hugh Grant.
A minor note: like a blossoming flower, Hugh Grant's features transitioned from the dark hair and dark eyes in Maurice while in his late twenties to the sandy hair and blue eyes in Notting Hill in his late thirties (when his charm peaked).
Music and Lyrics (2007), Love Actually (2003), About a Boy (2002), Bridget Jone's Diary (2001), Extreme Measures (1996 – stay away from action movies, Hugh), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) are…ah, your regular romantic comedy, with varying degrees of mediocrity.
But the thing is, Hugh Grant himself was never buried beneath whatever role he's playing. We see a little, or maybe a lot, of Hugh Grant in the characters he plays. The juror's verdict is: the reluctant actor should retire to writing. Did You Hear About the Morgans should be his last movie. Otherwise, he risks the danger he so fears himself: becoming worse and worse by each film and fade out with no dignity.