Occasionally Resembles A Play By Oscar Wilde

DVDs:

	• The Importance of Being Earnest Rupert Everett, Colin Firth Miramax, 2002 average customer review:based on 164 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Completely delightful

Having always been one of my favorite plays, I found this production to be just wonderful. I'm not a movie critic, only know what I like and don't. And I LOVED THIS. The casting couldn't have been more perfectly done. Bravo. Plus - I could replay my favorite scenes, which all happened to feature Rupert Everett. Sigh.

Occasionally Resembles A Play By Oscar Wilde

Wilde was present at the final dress rehearsal of his play and after watching the performance commented that he thought it was really splendid - indeed, in places it reminded him of a play he'd once written called The Importance of Being Earnest.

I had the same feeling after watching this DVD. The cast is talented and capable but the direction is entirely wrong for Earnest. The director has interpreted Wilde's lightweight comedy of social manners as though it were realist drama. As such the vast majority of lines are thrown away and the ridiculousness inherent in Wilde's script - the self-mockery - is largely lost. Only Judi Dench and one or two supporting cast members manage to push past this misdirection to provide moments of truly comic relief.

Earnest is a difficult play to stage because it reads better than it sounds; but the same is true of several Noel Coward plays and a good director can bring these off successfully so long as the style is correct. One can only hope that Earnest will be re-filmed at some point in the future by a director who understands how to interpret this kind of material. As it is, this DVD promises much but sadly delivers little.

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Inhanced theater

Stage plays are stage plays and not always easily converted to the screen. This production takes the stage play and enhances it with whimsy and settings that retain the humor and satire of the original play. Bravo!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Starring Reese Witherspoon (LEGALLY BLONDE), Colin Firth (BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY), and Rupert Everett (MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING), here is the hilarious adventure of two dashing young bachelors and the outrageous deceptions they find themselves in over love! Whenever Worthing (Firth) wants to leave his dull country life behind, he makes visits to the city posing as his fictitious "brother" Ernest. There, he becomes smitten with the ravishing Gwendolen (Frances O'Connor, A.I.). But when Worthing is in town, his playboy pal Algy (Everett) is in the country and falling for Worthing's young and beautiful ward, Cecily (Witherspoon) -- while also impersonating Ernest! Pandemonium ensues when these two would-be Ernests find themselves face-to-face and in the predicament of explaining who they really are!

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