The newly released Notting Hill is as pretty a film as you’re ever going to see. The gloss is high, the writing skillful, the editing brilliant, the leading actors dazzling, and the supporting actors superb. The film has so much going for it, in fact, that the only remaining question about it is why you’ll feel a mild urge to wash your hands on your way out of the theater.

In Notting Hill Julia Roberts plays superstar actress Anna Scott, whose misadventures in love are the stuff of tabloid legend. In real life, Notting Hill has just made Roberts the highest-paid actress in movie history — and she clearly deserves every penny of it. Her presence on screen shouts “Star!” at every moment, so loud and convincingly that fledgling director Roger Michell and writer Richard Curtis are able to perform some astonishingly efficient filmmaking, establishing everything the audience needs to know about the movie-actress life of the Anna Scott character before the credits are finished.