[thanks Janet ]

May 22, 2002
By STEPHEN HOLDEN 

In translating a play into a movie, a filmmaker can easily
lose sight of the fact that the essence of a great play
resides in its language and not in a movie's ability to go
on location or add cinematic frills. In opening up Oscar
Wilde's 1895 comic masterpiece, "The Importance of Being
Earnest," the director Oliver Parker, whose more
straightforward adaptation of Wilde's "Ideal Husband" three
years ago found an agreeable balance between period
lushness and linguistic precision, has gone overboard. 

What would Wilde have made of the embellishments Mr. Parker
has tacked onto the play like a reckless dressmaker tarting
up a Chanel suit to resemble a Versace gown? Those
additions include fantasy sequences, a ragtime band, a
hot-air balloon and a horse-and-carriage traffic jam. An
aggressively buoyant score (by Charlie Mole) washes through
the movie, giving it a perky vo-dee-o-do flavor that feels
more 1920's than 1890's. As much as possible, the play has
been moved outdoors to intoxicate us with the rarefied air
of an English country estate. 

And what of the language in a work where the refinements
and ambiguities of speech are everything? Wilde's famous
epigrams remain intact and are reasonably well spoken. But
the extra visual accouterments have a profoundly
distracting effect. They interrupt the rhythm and retard
the momentum of brilliantly silly banter that could be
described as incisive nonsense. When Lady Bracknell (Judi
Dench), the play's ur-snob, declares, "Ignorance is like a
delicious exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone,"
she conjures a privileged, cucumber-sandwich world where a
devotion to the superficial is a code of behavior and proof
of social superiority. 

The genius of the play is the brilliance with which it
simultaneously embodies and sabotages its concept. While
celebrating brittle badinage as a comic art form and
willful superficiality as the ultimate revenge on a cold
cruel world, it makes its garrulous, dissembling
aristocrats look ridiculous. Its twisty artificial plot, in
which the characters' assiduously cultivated lies turn out
to be true, and the putting of the concept of "earnestness"
through the comic wringer support Wilde's contention that
"we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously,
and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied
triviality." 

Half a century ago, "The Importance of Being Earnest" was
made into a classic, unabashedly stagy movie, directed by
Anthony Asquith, with a cast led by Edith Evans as Lady
Bracknell. It dispensed Wilde's aperçus with a brittle
insouciance that is largely missing from this souped-up
version. If this film, which opens in New York and Los
Angeles today and in other cities Friday, has a blue-ribbon
cast that more than matches its forerunner in name value,
it misses its high-toned elegance. 

Rupert Everett, that pouty, spoiled princeling who exudes a
Wildean hauteur tinged with a Wildean depravity, is
Algernon Moncrieff, the debt-ridden charmer who spends half
his life evading creditors by dashing off to the bedside of
an imaginary friend. Colin Firth exudes a bogus stolidity
as Algernon's friend and comic adversary, Jack Worthing, a
foundling discovered in a handbag, who is now the legal
guardian of Cecily Cardew (Reese Witherspoon), the dewy
granddaughter of the man who adopted him. When visiting
London, Jack plays his own charades, passing himself off as
his own nonexistent brother, Ernest, to win the hand of
Lady Bracknell's daughter, Gwendolen (Frances O'Connor),
who is fixated on the name Ernest. 

But Jack's obscure origins become an insurmountable
obstacle. As Lady Bracknell famously puts it, "You can
hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of
allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the
utmost care - to marry into a cloakroom and form an
alliance with a parcel." 

Ms. O'Connor plays Gwendolen as a mischievous refugee from
screwball comedy, while Ms. Witherspoon, affecting a
passable English accent, is every inch the simpering
rosy-cheeked ingénue. Since Cecily is also fixated on the
name Ernest as the only suitable name for a husband,
Algernon also lies about his name, and the confusion
between the bogus Ernests sparks more than one hissy fit. 

But the movie is so romantically insecure it inserts
over-decorated fantasy sequences in which Cecily imagines
Algernon as a knight in armor. Its biggest gaffe, which
lasts barely a second, is a flashback revealing Lady
Bracknell to have once been a music-hall floozy dandled on
the lap of her future husband. As tantalizing as it may be,
the suggestion that many of the world's grander dames have
shady pasts simply doesn't belong here. 

Dame Judi's Lady Bracknell is certainly redoubtable. But
her level-headed, realistic portrayal of the play's comic
linchpin and ultimate mouthpiece only hints at the absurd
grandiosity that can make Lady Bracknell laugh-out-loud
funny. 

I kept wishing I was hearing Maggie Smith reel off the same
speeches edged with the acid she infused into her curdled
aristocrat in "Gosford Park." Rounding out the principal
performances, Anna Massey, as Cecily's tutor, Miss Prism,
and Tom Wilkinson, as Dr. Chasuble, a discreetly enamored
clergyman who fawns over Miss Prism, give careful
understated performances in the same realistic key as Dame
Judi's. The whole tone of the movie needed to be ratcheted
up a note or two higher. 

For all its distractions and additions, "The Importance of
Being Earnest" is still a reasonably entertaining costume
comedy. Wilde's satirical voice may be muffled, but at
least it is audible. 

This film is rated PG (parental guidance suggested). It has
sexual innuendo. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST 

Directed by Oliver Parker; written by Mr. Parker, based on
the play by Oscar Wilde; director of photography, Tony
Pierce-Roberts; edited by Guy Bensley; music by Charlie
Mole; production designer, Luciana Arrighi; produced by
Barnaby Thompson; released by Miramax Films. Running time:
94 minutes. This film is rated PG. 

WITH: Rupert Everett (Algy), Colin Firth (Jack), Frances
O'Connor (Gwendolen), Reese Witherspoon (Cecily), Judi
Dench (Lady Bracknell), Tom Wilkinson (Dr. Chasuble), Anna
Massey (Miss Prism), Edward Fox (Lane), Patrick Godfry
(Merriman) and Charles Kay (Gribsby). 

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.