Am I Missing Something?

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I'll leave to others the question of whether this is a true and faithful adaptation of Oscar Wilde's great play. What concerns me is whether this work stands on its own merits and I'm happy to say it does. With a setting like Jane Austin, star crossed lovers like Shakespeare and mistaken identities like Three's Company, The Importance of Being Earnest is a delightfully funny truffle. The acting is light and wonderfully mannered. The direction opens things up without getting lost in the scenery. Wilde's wit is always distracting. Aside from Rupert Everett glowering at inopportune moments, I can't find much wrong with this film.Jack Worthing (Colin Firth) is a country gentleman in turn of the century England with a beautiful young ward (Reese Witherspoon) and an odd vice. Whenever Jack goes to London to see his old friend Algy Moncrieff (Rupert Everett), Jack pretends to be his own non-existent younger brother named Ernest. Whereas Jack in the country is proper beyond proper, Ernest in the city is almost as big a scoundrel and Algy. Ernest is also very much in love with Algy's spirited cousin Gwendolen (Frances O'Connor), but the imperious Aunt Augusta (Judi Dench) stands in the way of any romance. Though Ernest/Jack is a man of means, Aunt Augusta can't overlook his lack of family. Jack, you see, is an orphan and was discovered as a baby in a handbag left in the cloakroom of a railway station.Hold on, because things just get more complicated from here. Algy heads out to Jack's country estate and passes himself off as the fictitious Ernest in order to woo Jack's ward. Jack's none to happy to be forced into going along with the deception, especially when Gwendolen sends word that she's coming to the country to be with her Ernest. Two men trying to be the same man who doesn't exist turns out to be too much to manage and Jack and Algy are left to try and win again the hearts of the women they love, only to have Aunt Augusta show up and throw another spanner into the machine.From the schoolgirl fantasies of Jack's ward to Algy's efforts at avoiding his creditors to Colin Firth's adorable turn on the banjo, this is one of those movies at which you can't stop smiling. It does enough to establish the strict social mores of its setting but doesn't hesitate to indulge in entertaining anachronisms, like Algy playing a mean ragtime on the piano. With Judi Dench superbly playing the implacable force driving the other characters to exasperation, the comedic energy of the story never settles in one place long enough to get bogged down in any details of realism or plausibility.I will say The Importance of Being Earnest is perhaps the best instruction into why Rupert Everett didn't become as big a star as his talent warranted. Much like the young Alec Baldwin, there's something off putting about him on screen. When Algy acts the cad, Everett can play that perfectly. When he has to moon over Jack's ward, Everett never looks, sounds or feels quite right.Watching this has made me want to go out and see both a stage production of the play and check out the original big screen adaptation from 1952. That's about the highest compliment you can give a film like The Important of Being Earnest and I hand it out with no reservations.

This sad disappointment of a movie is what happens when you gather a group of top-notch actors together, give them one of the wittiest and funniest plays in the English language, and then put them under the direction of a film-maker who does not trust his material (which is a shame) and who furthermore believes that by tweaking it he may "improve" on it and render it more palatable for modern audiences (which is a scandal).To do director Oliver Parker some justice, "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a lighter-than-air comedy of social mores and is -- in its very essence -- not cinematic, but theatrical, as was its creator, Oscar Wilde. The witty absurdities tossed off by Wilde's characters can only truly become airborne in a theatrical milieu. An attentively listening theater audience engages in a sympathetic act of complicity with the actors on stage, one in which "the delighting ear outstrips the wicked tongue." But a movie camera is an eye, not an ear; it cannot provide the necessary complicity that would allow Wilde's arch dialogue to levitate. Robbed of that complicity, the characters die and the dialogue falls flat. Perhaps it is too much to expect this play ever to be given a 100% successful cinematic make-over.Parker cannot be faulted for trying to translate this play into a cinematic medium; he is, however, guilty of ham-handed 're-writes,' unnecessary excursions, ill-considered excisions, and a feckless attempt to jam his cast into cinematic "dress" that doesn't fit them and that leaves them looking foolish.Watching this film, I felt badly for all the fine actors ensnared in it. I'm betting Judi Dench has a superb Lady Bracknell somewhere in her... but it isn't on display here.My advice is to skip this movie if you're considering seeing or renting it. Try the much better '52 Anthony Asquith movie with an amusingly rebarbative Edith Evans at the top of her form.

"The Importance of Being Ernest" requires quite a bit of patience to endure it's first half or so until it more or less redeems itself with a quite entertaining second. Yes the earlier parts seem random hit and miss scenes with little motivation and rambling. However it begins to come into focus more, and a strong ensemble cast for the most part carries the movie in an undeniably British way even with Witherspoon along for the ride so to speak. Judi Dench hits her part right on as she does so well as a duchess type queen-bee bossy and befitting as ever. With the whole cast together for the last 20 min, the director, writers, and film-makers pull the movie up charmingly. So this comedy of destiny and family is a bit of mix, but overall on the good side of things....worth a look.

I seldom comment on these things, and even more rarely to express disapproval, as art is always difficult, and one wants to commend the attempt...but, long-term fan of the writer though I am, I found myself in parts of this wondering if Oscar Wilde was really as funny as I had always found him. But of course he is. ( Why, Pacino and company found rich depth of humor in Salome...I had never even suspected...) The fault here lies with the filmmakers, and rests most particularly with Mr. Parker's curious decision to confine his attempts to be funny to self invented scenes of tattooing and ballooning and such, and play most of the actual Wilde as a drama. The line readings are slow, the Polonius light character of Lady Bracknell is given to Judi Dench, an actor of tremendous gravity, the basket scene is played as if it were the unmasking of Oedipus - I kept expecting references to pinioned feet. I haven't even mentioned the anachronistic song number, which wouldn't have worked even had the piece been set in the twenties. Just appalling.I shouldn't complain, I suppose. The piece does have a curious, unintended virtue. The actors, in playing for subtext, and meaning (Lady Bracknell understands the personal transformation Firth intends to symbolize speaking of the death of Bumbury, as she looks deeply into Firth's eyes...I am not making this up), in playing for depth...render Wilde's piece completely clichéd and superficial. It's much deeper as froth. As an interpretation of Wilde's play, "The Importance of Being Ernest" is an utter failure. But as an illustration of certain of his aesthetic theories, it's priceless...