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He wasn't on these shows merely to flog himself; he was there to promote his movies. A workaholic in the English acting tradition, Grant has made 18 films in eight years, and part of the pleasure of following him has been to see a fellow with leading-man looks play so many variations on the upper-class twit. Last year, besides his suavely manic turn in Four Weddings, he was seen as the prim prelate in the Australian soft-core Sirens and as an hors d'oeuvre to a sexually voracious woman in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon. Now three more Grant films are in the U.S. malls: he is the lead in Nine Months and An Awfully Big Adventure and a supporting player in The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain.
British filmmakers are ever mindful of the glory days, nearly a half-century ago, when the Ealing Studios produced a smart series of social comedies. Two of Grant's new films aim for that mixture of nostalgia and satire. The Englishman ... is writer-director Christopher Monger's fable about a Welsh village whose denizens are determined that their local hill (elevation 300 m) be declared a mountain (elevation at least 305 m). Grant, as the English surveyor who is finally seduced by their cause, struts and tut-tuts through his part with authority, but all his patented exertions can't keep the film from proceeding at a geriatric pace.
An Awfully Big Adventure, directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings) and adapted by Charles Wood from Beryl Bainbridge's novel, has the convincingly seedy look--almost the dank smell--of Liverpool after World War II. Even a visiting theater troupe seem tired and tatty under their gaudy makeup. With baths a luxury, the locals can afford only to dream. That, at least, is the route taken by young Stella (Georgina Cates, in an affecting star debut), who joins the troupe and falls in love with its dashing director (Grant). For Stella he's just the wrong person: homosexual, vicious, smooth as snake oil. Grant here is wonderfully assured, residing inside this rotter as if he'd been waiting to play the role all his life. It's one of the good things to say about the actor: in big parts or small, he just wants to act.
But Hollywood wanted to make him a star, so he tries that in Nine Months, a big burly romp from director Chris Columbus (the Home Alone hits, Mrs. Doubtfire). Yet another high-concept comedy based on a French film, Nine Months tracks a child psychologist (Grant) and his dance-teacher lover (Julianne Moore, acute as always) from pregnancy through delivery of a baby the man isn't at all ready for.
Columbus sidesteps certain iffy issues raised in the French original--where the man, on hearing of his impending fatherhood, says to his girlfriend, "I have the honor to ask you to have an abortion," and later has a sexual fling on the side--for more general, genial comedy. The movie also gets unwontedly frantic toward the end, with slapstick brawls and auto injuries. (Note to Hollywood: Can you outlaw funny car crashes, starting right now?) But the film has a cleverness that is as irresistible as it is predictable, and Grant eventually looks comfortable in the main role he has to play here: movie star.