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 enlarge | Director: Christopher Monger
Actors: Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Colm Meaney, Ian Mcneice, Ian Hart
Studio: Miramax
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.99
Buy New: $4.41
You Save: $5.58 (56%)
New (35) Used (22) Collectible (1) from $4.40
Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 5745
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 96 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.5
MPN: D17591D
ISBN: 0788816861
UPC: 717951003287
EAN: 9780788816864
ASIN: 6305428557
Theatrical Release Date: May 12, 1995
Release Date: September 7, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 21-25 of 57
 Stop actin' so English! September 26, 2004
A. Gyurisin (Wet, Wild, Wonderful Virginia)
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
This was a very simple film. I felt at first it was going to be an enormous "chick-flick", the story is actually much deeper than just the love connection between Grant and the local girl. It is actually a story of a town and the strength of their belief. It also portrays a small town coping with the loss of so many young men and boys to the war. While I thought it was going to be nothing but the usual Hugh Grant film, it was less about Grant and more about this little town in Wales.
Based on a true story, I watched with amazement as townspeople put aside their differences, put aside their hatred, put aside their lives, to create a mountain from a hill. This mountain represented more to these people then money, then jobs, then anything that we now take for granted. Could you honestly say that if your hometown asked you to build a mountain that you would join, or would you wonder first if you had the time?
I am impressed with this style of film. I have only seen a handful of films that have the theme of community as their central focus, one is going to be my movie homework, another is a great British film called Saving Grace where a community comes together to help a local widow.
I did have some issues with this film. One big one was the title. Please, if you are ever going to make a film do not make the title also the plot. I mean, I think you can gather from the title what the entire film is going to be like. Another problem was that this film was too simple. I felt that some deeper sub-plot could have been created to bring some depth to this community. I think the director tried to do this with the story of the local boy who had gone to war only to return mentally unstable. I think this could have been such a great sentimental story, but it just was not developed enough. This goes the same for the girl that Grant fell in love with. I felt that it was well too rushed. It only seemed that near the end of the film they truly loved each other and wanted to marry after only spending three to four days together.
Maybe times were simpler back then, and perhaps that is another smaller theme, but I think this was a much deeper film. Deeper than I could have imagined. Bravo to "Star Trek" man Colm Meaney with his portrayal of Morgan the Goat. He stole this film away from Hugh. See this film if you have the chance.
I don't think you will all like it, but it is worth watching at least once.
Grade: *** out of *****
 A magnificent motive for being a great film but ... August 30, 2004
Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
In this kind of movies you miss the presence of a giant film maker . And Monger is a talented director but he lacks from the greatness sense , that absence of scope .
Think for instance what would John Huston , David Lean , Franklin Schaffner (in the past) or Jim Sheridan , Mike van Diem , Bertrand Tavernier , Kenny Loach , Aki Kaurismaki or Werner Herzog would have done with such material - to name just a few examples of directors who seek the real esence behind the script - ?.
These are one of the weird cases one misses the absence of commitment to appreciate the real impact which a film like this could become .
The script , however , is excellent . To get a community inspire by themselves to make all the possible efforts to reach the goal ; sixteen ground feet tall to become a hill in a mountain was an issue which really deserved something much more than a funny entertainment .
Nevertheless the story is so original and strong that it remains by itself above all .
Watch this little but unvaluable gem .
 creepy and depressing August 9, 2004
mark twain (Uruguay)
3 out of 31 found this review helpful
While in the throes of stomach flu, I went down to the local video store and rented this dog, hoping it would be just the thing to take my mind off feeling like utter bollocks. The movie is billed as a comedy. It is not. There is absolutely nothing funny in the entire film. Hugh Grant and his surveyor boss stumble on the scene of a Welsh town that is so deeply backward that they take grave offense at the idea of the local mountain being classified as a hill. There is nothing funny about their primitive psychology; and indeed I felt increasingly uneasy as the animosity of the townspeople toward the English surveyors began to mount. I could not help but feel that the population was just a hair's breadth from murder at all times. Instead the good townspeople content themselves with permanently sabotaging the car of the surveyors. The upright fire and brimstone local vicar has a hand in the sabotage, saying "Forgive them God, for they know not what they do" as he slashes a tire. I find this utterly creepy. The vicar might as well be murdering the surveyors, offering the same schismatic formula. In the meantime, a local prostitute is brought in to ply Hugh Grant with her charms. Romantic, isn't it? Just as coyly funny as Johnny Shellshocked, the local war victim, becoming unglued on top of the mountain in a thunderstorm as he tries to assist in the chicanery of piling dirt on the mountaintop to augment its height. Can anyone doubt that with their innate hatred of the English these townspeople would seize upon and murder and perhaps even cannibalize the surveyors did they not countenance the mountain's new height? In some atavistic frenzy they would club them to death and drag their bodies through the streets. Good Fun!
Worst evening of my life. May 28, 2004
Poop (New York, NY USA)
1 out of 37 found this review helpful
I would have rather spent a full 6 hours of an evening watchign a boring 1-0, 15 inning MINOR league baseball game than have to watch this again. If i had a spoon within reach, i would gouge out my eyeballs instead of having to watch this ridiculous, awful film ever again. Worst.....Film.......Ever!
 I love the movie and yet find a satisfactory DVD May 8, 2004
Jie Yin (Evanston, IL USA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
A great test of whether you have subtle taste and a real humorous mind: after the first 10 minutes into the movie - once you adjust your ear to the music-like accent and figure out what's going on - you will smile all the way to the end. A fantastic comedy for suited mind. Warning of the DVD: I bought, exchanged, and finally returned 3 copies of this DVD from various vendors, all of them are defects! If you look at the back side of the DVD, you will see some checker-like patterns on the surface - not as smooth and reflective as usual disk. My player will play partial frames and then stops. I wonder if this particular title is manufactured wrong or bad luck follows me for 3 times. I kept my VHS as a result. If anyone find or own a good DVD on this title, please let me know from which vendor you bought it - there got to be some good stock on this title. The good movie deserves a better DVD transfer.
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