The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995)

If high school football matters to west Texas, then size matters to Wales. Because quite frankly, what else sets Wales apart? Everyone easily recognizes Ireland, Scotland, and England, but Wales? What's it known for?

I'm sure there are a few mainstream movie titles that are longer, but at 12 words long, this one is pretty long. And, it essentially contains the synopsis of the story. Anson (Hugh Grant) is the Englishman. He and his partner come to the small Wales community to measure the mountain, and World War I is in the background. Soldiers in Europe have dug trenches across the continent. They know what's possible.

So, when the measurement is complete, the "mountain" turns out to be 16 feet short. It's just a 984-foot hill. But the town decides, with the blessing of the local clergyman, to make their hill into a mountain, one pailful of dirt at a time. Everyone pitches in, and after climbing the hill five times in single day. the octogenarian Reverend Jones (Kenneth Griffith) dies. They place his burial mound right on top of the giant pile of dirt at the top of the hill, and that's final feet they need to clear the 1000-foot mark. They have made their mountain.

As far as I know, the story is fiction, but there is a "mountain" in Wales this movie is based on. It's good for tourism, as people climb to the top to see where movie magic happened. The ending even shows the people of the "modern community" continuing to make sure that the mountain remains over 1000 feet, as settling happens, dropping the height below the necessary amount. This, I think, is just a cute ending. No one is actually monitoring the mountain to make sure it stays above 1000 feet...

Oh, and Anson and Betty (Tara Fitzgerald) get married. Why was that necessary? Is the marriage necessary to help this movie qualify as a romance? Why couldn't the romance simply be about the community and its mountain?

Rating: 4/5 stars

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