Good Woman, A

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

All in all, A Good Woman retains ye olde Wilde's zing, his sense of pace and place, but most of all his snappy one-liners, and it finds a new way to showcase them brilliantly.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Amazingly, not all of the witty and wise barbs are Wilde's, and any confusion between the old and the new is probably the highest compliment one could possibly pay to screenwriter Howard Himelstein's tart screenplay.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The movie is gorgeous to look at, the script has a killer twist and the cast is competent.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Wilkinson artfully deepens a character who in Wilde's original play was rather boobish. It's a marvelous performance in a pretty good film.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

A witty and engaging bit of fluff about sex, scandal, idleness, gossip, blackmail, guilty secrets and, most surprisingly, redemption.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The movie succeeds because screenwriter Howard Himelstein keeps Wilde's best lines intact and the actors speak the words with practiced confidence.

Film Threat Phil Hall

A pleasant diversion which mixes snatches of Wilde's waspish humor with a stylish Art Deco environment. The result is amusing to the ears and easy on the eyes.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Director Mike Barker elicits a marvelously agile performance from Hunt, who's well matched by Tom Wilkinson as her new admirer.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

I watched A Good Woman with a fixed smile frequently interrupted by giggles, but I didn't believe a second of it.

USA Today Claudia Puig

For the most part, Wilde's sophisticated, sardonic dialogue has been capably adapted by screenwriter Howard Himelstein and director Mike Barker.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Hunt, whose flutelike voice makes music of Wilde's dialogue, has the most difficult role. While she acquits herself honorably, she nudges her lines a little too broadly, as if she's worried that the audience will miss the double meanings and wordplay.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Pleasant and undemanding, all the more so whenever Tom Wilkinson's on-screen as a possible Erlynne suitor, the movie miscasts Hunt as the pragmatic seductress.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Hunt's flat delivery is mercilessly cruel to Wilde's delicious epigrams. That sound you hear is Oscar spinning madly in his grave.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

While screenwriter Howard Himelstein and director Mike Barker have done a workable job of drawing the Wilde social satire out of the drawing room, the film never quite manages to travel at the same buoyant velocity as the acerbic wit.

Variety Derek Elley

Has a script that plays more like a period romancer studded with occasional Wilde-isms and gets uneven treatment from a mixed Anglo-American cast.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

The trick to staging Wilde is to hint at the gravity beneath the witticisms. A Good Woman barely even gets the witticisms out, though it does contain Wilde's line about people being either tedious or charming.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The film is well intentioned and mildly diverting, but in attempting to modernize its story it has lost many of the things that make the original so memorable and not gained much in return.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

When put into the mouths of American actors with no feel for Wilde's high-toned repartee, they simply hang in the air and die.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

A tedious picture, redeemed in part by Tom Wilkinson's performance as Tuppy--he's the sole cast member who doesn't give birth to every epigram--and by the hats.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A Good Woman is pretty to look at and fakes witty elegance passably, so consider it a diversion -- a movie that might have been in the Oscar race if the elements had jelled but has instead been properly hung out to dry in February.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Johansson never looked more beautiful, nor gave a lamer performance, than in A Good Woman.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The real fault with this movie lies less with the clunky screenplay from Himelstein than with the acting, of which there is very little of note.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Something is wrong with A Good Woman: The lightning never strikes. It's never quite alive.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

With the two American actresses miscast, and the two young British lads behaving like a couple of "Brideshead Revisited" rejects, most of the dramatic heavy lifting is left to veteran English actor Wilkinson.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

This is one of those movies destined to be watched by family groups who can't agree on what to see: You'll all get a few chuckles, and then it's home for dessert.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Hunt and Johansson, two usually good actresses, are vapidly awful, teetering out of their elements in this shakily drawn period piece.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

With its jellyfish direction, A Good Woman throws its actors overboard to see if they can swim.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Stephen Campbell Moore is miserably out of his depth as the playboy trying to tempt Scarlett, leaving poor Tom Wilkinson to sound a lone note of sophisticated intelligence.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

British director Mike Barker and magpie New York screenwriter Howard Himelstein, have taken "Lady Windermere's Fan" - Wilde's first big stage success, written in 1892 - and pulped it senseless in the name of puttin' on the charm.