To celebrate the release of First Night cinemas nationwide this Friday 14th October, here is a look at the best British Rom Coms over the last few years!
Love, Actually (2003)
It’s the annual Christmas cracker that draws on a wealth of Brit talent from the likes of Emma Thompson as a wronged wife and mother and Bill Nighy as a potty-mouthed rock god, to Colin Firth as the lovesick writer and Hugh Grant as the hip-shaking Prime Minister. Who can forget those PM moves at Number 10 to Girls Aloud’s version of Jump? Just missing out at the Golden Globes, the film did earn Nighy a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor.
Notting Hill (1999)
A Curtis classic about an American film star who falls for an average guy. Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant team up on the trendy streets of Notting Hill, where love blossoms in the gardens, and Rhys Ifans shows his underpants to the world’s press in that unforgettable scene. It didn’t quite win gold at the Globes but it certainly makes you want to run a small off-the-beaten-track bookshop in the heart of London’s cosmopolitan district.
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Mr Richard Curtis’s most infamous work that put Hugh Grant on the international map and won him a Golden Globe as the foppish, unlucky-in-love Brit, Charles, who bumps into his ‘Ms Right’, played by Andie MacDowell, at each eventful wedding he attends. Trouble is Charles’ ex ‘Duck Face’ and a list of other people he’d like to forget keep getting in the way. Will Charles and his friends ever find true love and marry?
First Night (2011)
First Night, starring Richard E. Grant and Sarah Brightman, fuses the stately grandeur of Gosford Park with the magical music of Amadeus for a unique story of love’s fluctuating fortunes, set against a sumptuous backdrop of visual and vocal beauty. As the cast, drama and score all tread the tightrope of tone between humour and pathos, what unfolds is a timeless romantic comedy!
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Bridget Jones is the ultimate neurotic spinster, stuck in a dead end job and fretting over her alcohol, cigarette and calorie intake. However, she to turn her life around with a series of New Year’s resolutions that will help her find Mr Right and tracks her progress good or bad throughout the year in her diary. Humorous fight scenes and witty one-liners make Bridget Jones a classic British film.
Starter For Ten (2006)
This wise and story of a naive young man’s misadventures at university (based on the novel, and adapted by the great David Nicholls) offers charm and laughs. It also manages to pull off at least two genre-bending reversals, one in a restaurant and one towards the end. You’ll know when you see them… and watch out for the likes of James Corden, Benedict Cumberbatch and Dominic Cooper as well.
First Night is out in cinemas Friday 14th October!