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."
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."