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49
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9
17
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37
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53
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61
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55
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43
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66
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23
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34
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41
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73
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78
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66
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69
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58
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47
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34
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54
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67
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28
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58
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39
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30
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53
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33
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45
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46
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71
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67
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28
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73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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56
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76
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86
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71
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76
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26
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44
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81
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76
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70
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62
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65
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69
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60
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82
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75
Crude
82
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53
Dare
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67
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70
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85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
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31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
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89
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74
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xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
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46
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34
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45
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59
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Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
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79
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65
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50
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58
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82
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49
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73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Bright Young Things
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 3 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama | Foreign
Written by:
Stephen Fry
Evelyn Waugh (novel Vile Bodies)
Directed by: Stephen Fry
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 20, 2004
DVD: February 8, 2005
Running Time: 105 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: R for some drug use
Starring Emily Mortimer, Stephen Campbell Moore, Fenella Woolgar, James McAvoy, Michael Sheen, David Tennant, Stockard Channing, and Guy Henry
Based on the classic novel "Vile Bodies" by Evelyn Waugh, this satirical comedy and love story is set in 1930's London.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site Offical UK Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
Fry establishes himself as an inspired, world-class talent behind the camera and delivers my favorite film of the year thus far.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie has a sweetness and tenderness for these characters, poor lambs, blissfully unaware that they're about to be flattened by World War II.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
This is a wickedly funny skewering of a prewar London society gone mad with frivolity.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A brilliant, giddy satiric romp with a discreetly moralistic viewpoint beneath its high-style wit.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
in its best moments, Bright Young Things is as lithe and as wicked as its source material. Depending on how much of a Waugh purist you are, its flaws may trouble you as you're watching it. But afterward, they might not matter so much.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Waugh's dialogue, effortlessly catching the lockjaw intonations and facetious mannerisms of the British aristocracy between the world wars, is a gift to screenwriters and performers alike. The actors Mr. Fry has assembled receive the gift with gusto and grace.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
I could quibble with the conventionally romantic ending and a couple of small but not-so-cosmetic alterations, but on the whole, this is just how I'd always imagined one of my favorite comic novels should look and sound.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
As faithful to the spirit of the novel, and the era that inspired it, as a movie could be yet still feel as fresh as Paris Hilton dish on Page Six.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Fry's film has the frantic energy and kaleidoscopic style of Waugh's feverish prose.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Both script and direction are the work of the glittering comedic polymath Stephen Fry.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
An enjoyable movie that marks a rattling good directorial debut for Stephen Fry, the English actor who's best known for starring in "Wilde" seven years ago.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Essentially, the film stays at the party too long. But for a good stretch, its combination of twirling excitement and dry absurdity captures the spirit of characters too intoxicated to realize they're dancing over a chasm.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
There's no denying that Fry's movie is all the livelier for its gay embellishment.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
The performance that comes closest to capturing the Waugh elixir is Fenella Woolgar's as madcapping Miss Runcible, who ultimately commandeers a racing car.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
The film stumbles a bit in its third act, when war kills the good times for good.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
It fails to dig beneath that surface picture and offer up anything in the way of explanation or motivation.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Daniel Wible
Fun, giddy, and intoxicating as the endless soirees in which it revels.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Fry's saving grace is his love of actors. The younger and less familiar performers are more than adequate, but it's the older guard that shines. Broadbent is marvelously rummy.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Lacks the novel's drier-than-dry bite, but compensates with a strong ensemble cast and a series of glamorous party sequences in which the decor has at least as much depth as the guests.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Despite some moments, the movie stubbornly fails to be the kind of sparkling ensemble piece one would expect from its credits -- and the fault seems to lie squarely with Fry's unfocused script, lackadaisical direction and conceptual sleight of hand.
Read Full Review >New York Post Megan Lehmann
Ultimately, though, the lively whirl of debauched, drug-fueled parties and toffee-nosed exchanges between heiresses and aristocrats fails to mask the essential hollowness of the narrative.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
By the time Fry lets darkness encroach on these bright young things, the fizz is gone, and so is any reason to make us give a damn.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
An easy-to-digest slice of literate entertainment for upscale and older audiences that lacks a significant emotional undertow to make it a truly involving -- rather than simply voyeuristic -- experience.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Soon settles down into a drizzle of steady mediocrity, never living up to all the frenzy of those first few moments.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Worse still is his idiotic tampering with the so-called "Happy Ending" -- in print, it's bleakly ironic; on screen, incongruously sentimental.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Noisy and giddy, the film makes a stab at "Moulin Rouge" territory but ends up as a very trite story of boy loses girl, boy finds girl. It is also stridently camp -- not so much roaring '20s as screaming.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Under his (Fry’s) direction this 2003 British feature becomes a flat, depressing affair.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ed Park
Aside from cameos by Jim Broadbent (as the drunken major) and Peter O'Toole (as Nina's reclusive, eccentric father), much of the acting strains for a sophistication that quickly becomes annoying.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The movie, alas, is shackled somewhat by Waugh's original, pedestrian plot, which is too full of discrete incidents and slow to form an overarching story.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
B Keown gave it a 9:
Perhaps not the most sophisticated movie that has been made to date, but this is a film with heart--from the director who clearly adores the subject to the actors who show these people in all their bizarre but natural self and not a Hollywood Camp silhouette to the details of the set and sound. A high quality film that those with a good taste for history, literature and fun will appreciate.
Tony gave it a 4:
It came close to being really good. A few little changes would have made it much more enjoyable. I'd like to say what those changes would be, but that would give something away.
