`NOTTING HILL' RISES ABOVE ROMANTIC PACK.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

If, average guy, you have ever dreamed of Julia Roberts falling in love with you, ``Notting Hill'' may give you some second thoughts.

A measurably witty, amusingly narcissistic romp that's, yes, about dating someone very much like Julia Roberts, ``Hill'' actually boasts a semblance of emotional reality whenever our hero, an unsuccessful London bookstore owner played by Hugh Grant, must confront his new girlfriend's celebrity. It's almost always a degrading, dismaying experience, and it gives this frothy fantasy a solid basis even as it threatens to undercut Roberts' dreamgirl status forevermore.

While most contemporary romantic comedies - take a Sandra Bullock movie, any Sandra Bullock movie - employ idiotic plotting and abject slavery to convention to prevent their stars from coupling up until the end, ``Hill'' throws a barrier of genuine feelings in their path. Mostly his feelings; why Roberts' world-famous movie star, Anna Scott, falls for sweet loser William Thacker is never really clarified beyond the fact that he's played by Hugh Grant. Still, it's nice to see relationship complications that are at least half-based on character rather than on sheer contrivance and moronic misunderstandings.

The story's niceties should not be overstated, though. ``Hill'' is formulaic as all get-out, with the same kind of cast of sad, supportive friends and mild eccentrics that populated the last romantic comedy Richard Curtis wrote, ``Four Weddings and a Funeral.'' There are many wry lines and even a good number of perceptively written whole sequences. But Noel Coward it ain't.

What it quite delectably is, however, is a media-age satire on the travails of being, well, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Her Anna is in London promoting some dreadful-sounding space movie. She wanders into William's shop during a break from press rounds, he winds up spilling orange juice on her, she changes her clothes at his modest flat across Portobello Road and, although understandably miffed, she plants a big one on his lips before leaving.

The next thing William knows, he's faking his way through a movie press junket (lampooned wonderfully I say, and I've been to a thousand of them) to get a little one-on-one time with his new favorite star. Anna's receptive and happily accompanies him to a small dinner party where William's friends' varying reactions to her are priceless.

But as love blossoms, the weeds of Anna's celebrity lifestyle grow around it. She's always coming and going, and not just out of town, out of continent. Other romances intrude (the surprise star cameo could've been bigger, but it's still a scream).

Anna's self-absorbed whining is often poignant but sometimes sounds like the special pleading of a poor little $15-million-a-picture superstar. But at least the basically diffident William busts her on it, indicating that, nice schlub though he may be, there's backbone under the doormat. In fact, Anna's sporadic brattiness also gives the film another realistic obstacle to true love - and bravo to Roberts for playing it without vanity.

For the most part, though, Grant and Roberts ooze charm as lavishly as their heads grow spectacular hair. You not only want them to be together, you want to be together with at least one of them, which is a necessary effect if this art-reflects-life comedy is to work at all.

The other characters in the film, mostly William's acquaintances, blend into a kind of Keystone Kops emotional rescue squad. But Rhys Ifans has his moments as Spike, William's gangly Welsh roommate, a dumb slob who, predictably if paradoxically, always has the best advice for his confused friend.

The director is Roger Michell, a British stage and TV veteran. He likes to let actors take their time with one another, and that provides a great balance to the cutesier, more sitcomish elements of Curtis' screenplay. He makes sure ``Notting Hill'' accommodates the specifics of two people growing together as well as hitting all of the standard love story marks.

For a film about loving someone who makes Hollywood movies these days, that's romantic fantasy of an unusually high order.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Notting Hill'' (PG-13; language, adult situations).

The stars: Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Rhys Ifans.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Roger Michell. Written by Richard Curtis. Produced by Duncan Kenworthy. Released by Universal Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, three minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars.

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Photo

Photo: ``Notting Hill'' pairs Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant as an actress and bookstore owner who fall in love.