Good start, but then it gets ruined

Absolutely the worst movie.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is clearly an "omage" to Brideshead Revisited . . . which is also clearly the reason such ludicrous pap won the Booker Prize - always won by either "black" authors or pooftas so we all know that the English are really understanding people and better than all the others etc in the world . . . what is everyone talking about Gatsby for? It has nothing whatever to do with Gatsby? In any way whatever? . . . ??? Like everything you ever see these days this production is really beautifully done, but what for? . . .This is beautiful crap from beginning to end. I can't believe the cliché after cliché, the weak unbelievable nonsense that we are meant to weep over? We are meant to weep over a man discovering that his adoptive father has a mistress when we have seen his boyfriend, who he thinks is the most beautiful man he has ever seen (!), f*** another man in front of him? Seriously we are meant to weep - they have that "dead baby" music playing . . . blah blah it's endless I'm getting angry now!Crap as an "omage" . . . well maybe THAT is significant? With Post-Modernism you never know?

Perhaps I couldn't find the DVD menu selection for PLOT: ON OFF. Clearly, the default is OFF. When the end credits began to roll, I couldn't believe that was it. Like our poor, but beautiful protagonist, I felt used, dirty, cheap....The characters were drawn in very broad strokes and the writer's disdain for wealthy Thatcherites was all to apparent. I consider myself a "Roosevelt Democrat", but would appreciate a bit more subtlety.Of course, the problem could be with me. I see that many others seem to find some meaning or message in this picture. Alas, not I. The only thing that kept me from giving this a "1" was the nice scenery, human and plant.

This is a 3 part BBC mini-series about upper class folk & members of Parliment also a few gay persons as well.We did see & RAVE about TO CATCH A KING a few months back. Line of Beauty has somewhat of the same type story BUT is far inferior in comparison.Thw first 2 hours of this teleplay are very well done, BUT the last hour is pure soap opera melodrama,at the end of which I felt I wasted 3 hours.This film is based on a prize winning novel & tells the story of gay & political life during the Thatcher administration (1980's).In the 80's or even early 90's this tale would have have had more interest,. The last hour dates it miserably, (spoiler alert) a few characters die (AIDS)& I felt nothing for them, mainly cause they were not that likable. I find nothing likable about cocaine users. OH another spoiler alert, That is the line of beauty. the line of coke before it is sniffed.Nearly any of the cast were not familiar to me, The acting & characterizations were OK,nothing noteworthy, Good production values & good music with n good song score,If the last hour were better I would have given this a better review.Ratings: **1/2 (out of 4) 69 points (out of 100; IMDb 6 out of 10

Okay, so it may seem unfair to review The Line of Beauty after having only seen Episode One, but the sneaky peek on show last night at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival gave every indication that this adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel is a classic in the making.Everyone who has read the novel will have his or her own impression of the characters and locales. (I lived in Notting Hill for more than a decade, so my mental picture of the story was probably more vivid than most.) But within minutes of the bravura opening sequence (grafted onto the novel by canny adapter Andrew Davies), director Saul Dibb makes Nick Guest's world his own.What I found so extraordinary about this adaptation (or at least the first episode) is how cleverly Davies has mined the novel for humour, social commentary and romance. On- screen representations of the upper-middle-classes tend to show us the wholly implausible world of PG Wodehouse, but without Wodehouse's wit, or stick the knife in with bitter class hatred. The Line of Beauty does neither; showing us the Fedden family warts and all. Gerald Fedden MP (in a stunningly good characterisation by Tim McInnerney) is quite the pompous paterfamilias, but is also generous, funny and kind.As our "eyes and ears" through the story, newcomer Dan Stevens is pitch-perfect; his clear, blue eyes miss nothing as his life becomes more and more entwined with the Feddens and their glittering world. The clips shown of the following two episodes promise no decline in quality, so if The Line of Beauty does not come quite as close to perfection as Brideshead Revisited - which remains the high watermark of British television drama - it is still shaping up to be landmark adaptation, and not to be missed when it premieres on BBC2 later in May.