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The Importance of Being Earnest

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The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

May. 17,2002
|
6.8
|
PG
| Drama Comedy History Romance
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Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ("Ernest") on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities...

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Dynamixor
2002/05/17

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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Rio Hayward
2002/05/18

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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Fatma Suarez
2002/05/19

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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Juana
2002/05/20

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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SuperWitty Smitty
2002/05/21

A few years ago, friends of mine got tickets to a production of this work at a small theater in the Village. Before going, I read the play and wasn't very entertained, but when I saw it performed, I was charmed! Last week I noticed there was a movie adaptation on Netflix and rented the DVD and I'm glad I did. The movie was witty, sexy, and smart- the performers all did credit to the play and I am really glad I watched it. I'm going to check out the older version, too. I really like Reese Withersppon: she seems to be an intelligent and thoughtful actress, not someone just looking for a paycheck. The woman who played Gwendolyn was also good, and very attractive. Dame Judy is always a treat, and the sets in this production really made the story come alive- I wish I were a gentleman living in those days with "an income" that allowed me to live like Jack did- half the time in the city and the other half as a Lord on my country estate.

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Robert J. Maxwell
2002/05/22

Nicely executed comedy of mixed-up names and fake identities leading to an improbable happy ending.It's interesting to compare this with the 1953 version that starred Michael Redgrave and Richard Wattis. They're both successful but I think the modern version slightly edges the earlier version out, although it's difficult to beat that 1953 cast -- Joan Greenwood, Dorothy Tutin, Edith Evans, Miles Malleson.The earlier version has a lighter and less subtle approach. Everyone involved seemed to know this was a comedy and it's all very gay and casual.There's more subtlety here, especially from Colin Firth because he plays it as if he were an ordinary, richly embarrassed man. The guy is superb. Anna Massey is great too as the governess. It's making me feel ancient to remember that she was such a goofy-looking but sexy dish in Hitchcock's "Frenzy." If you must have a replacement for Margaret Rutherford as Miss Prism, Massey will do. As the two girls involved, Reese Witherspoon is very Aryan and Frances O'Connor is canny.Judi Dench is Lady Bracknell and she has some of the funniest of Wilde's more extravagant lines. When a man is on his knees, about to propose to a girl, she orders him to "remove yourself from that semi-recumbent position; it's most indecorous." Even Edward Fox, in the small part of Firth's butler, is exemplary, muttering in his usual obsequious tone as he serves the tea about his overdue wages.The director departs from the earlier format by not shooting it as a staged play. Ladies gallop on horses, men grapple over a bunch of bluebells, the source music is close to ragtime, there are a couple of whimsical fantasies shown that are more colorful than engaging.But -- well, how can you beat those florid expressions? A doorbell rings and someone sourly observes, "It must be a relative. Only relatives and predators would ring in such a Wagnerian manner."

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MBunge
2002/05/23

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.

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msbsegal
2002/05/24

07 FEB 2008 Owing to my good studies at Paris University under the tutorial of the late Professor Robert Merle, the tremendous author of "Weekend à Zuydcoote", "The Day of the Dolphin", etc., who wrote is PhD thesis on the life and work of Oscar Wilde, Writing this comment I have just discovered that my revered Professor had passed away in 2004, and I feel a pinch in my heart, yet his teaching, jokes, good humor and immense knowledge of the English Literature - which got him on the boat that took him to free London after the debacle of the French Army at the beginning of WWII; "Weekend at.." is a true biographical story - will always remain in my mind and in my heart; this is a true Byronian addendum So owing to my said studies and my preferred taste, I know most of Oscar Wilde's work by heart, and especially TIOBE. I read some of the comments, the ones, who like this version and the ones, who do not appreciate it.No one has underlined that the strength of Oscar Wilde's wit is his brilliant, sharp and acute use of paradox, which my Random Dictionary defines as:"1/ a seemingly contradictory or absurd statement that expresses a possible truth; 2/ a self-contradictory and false proposition; 3/ a person, thing or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature; 4/ an opinion or statement contrary to commonly accepted opinion." or in the case of Oscar Wilde all the 4 propositions very smartly intertwined in this play, his very best. Of course he uses paradox in his previous plays, but here in TIOBE he has achieved the top effects of all the 4 paradox possibilities at their best. And this is what makes this play so enjoyable not only at the time of Queen Victoria, but at any given time : mothers will always try to get the best possible match for their off-springs, and this was true in 1890 and in 1990 and in 2002..... Nothing has changed, except for the way we dress, speak, etc. And as one commentator wrote very sensibly, in this version "we do not hear four-letter words, farts, burps, or see tits, and more buttocks, "I must say that I have found this version of the play very true to the intention of the author, and no, Oscar Wilde would not turn in his grave, I am sure he would be very pleased and have a great time. I want to add that all the actors, including the two butlers Edward Fox and Patrick Godfrey, have done a terrific job, and I want to say that Dame Judi Dench has done tremendously with Lady Bracknell (which I thought she had not done so well with Lady De Bourg in the latest version of P&P), I may not like so much the additions of the Muses in the bushes, etc.., but this is a movie and not a PLAY on a stage. A play may lend itself to interpretations and some changes, since there are no clear-cut limits imposed by the author. Regarding P&P, for instance, the author has written in the NOVEL exactly all he or she, she in this example, wants to see and all she needs to bring her ideas to the mind of the readers, this is why I tend to be very demanding of the directors to respect the text of the authors : they cannot do what they jolly well please !!! Please go and enjoy !

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