Doubters Become Believers After Seeing Quirky ‘Englishman’

In “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain,” proud Welsh villagers scheme to waylay a pair of English map makers until the locals can add enough dirt to a local hill to classify it as a mountain. (Rated PG-13)

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Most young filmgoers probably have to be cajoled into coming to foreign films with cumbersome titles such as this.

Emily Hansen, 14, said most of her friends prefer movies such as “Village of the Damned” to cute movies like this one. She and her brother Greg, 11, would never have thought of going if their mother hadn’t suggested it on Mother’s Day, she said.

But in the end, they both gave it an A.

Emily liked seeing the picture-postcard scenes of a small Welsh village, Ffynnon Garw, during World War I, and she liked the abundance of village characters: the righteous 82-year-old preacher, the lusty innkeeper, the dimwitted brothers and the flirty maid sent to distract the youngest cartographer, Reginald (Hugh Grant), from his task.

There are also plenty of adorable kids: from the young boy who firsts asks to be told the old tale of the Englishman to the village children who are let out of school to carry pails of dirt to the top of the mountain.

Clearly there was more to this comedy than the bare bones of the plot, and Emily found some parts of the movie moving.

One of the town’s young men, for instance, had been sent back from the front in shock. Like the village’s other inhabitants who suffer from a dearth of surnames to distinguish them, he became known by his special characteristic: Johnny Shellshocked. He tries to help cover the new dirt with a tarpaulin when it is threatened by rains, but he is immobilized by the thunder and lightning. As the villagers’ project moves forward, his is one of many lives changed for the better.

The adult themes may be over the mental radar of younger children. Greg said he had the feeling the movie was deeper than it appeared, and he might have enjoyed it even more if he could have put his finger on it. Still, he found the story enjoyable, and there is nothing in it to offend.

Girls said they were charmed by the unusually unassuming Grant, who plays the same smart, self-deprecating, stuttering sort of lover he did in “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” The attraction, Emily said, is that he’s a “gentle man” as well as a gentleman.

Ten-year-old Christine Ways agreed. “He’s shy,” she said. “Like me.”