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90Shines like a freshly minted coin in Oliver Parker's adaptation.
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88It's a movie of uncommon eloquence and elegance, acted by a truly gifted cast.
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83Makes the translation with all its wit, incisive dialogue and eccentric characters intact, and then some.
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80It all seems calculated to churn up excitement, a promise that there's lots of dazzle, glamour and intrigue to come. An Ideal Husband actually does deliver all those things, but mostly in a pleasurably understated way -- no need for the noisy signals.
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80What shakes the dust off this period piece is the vibrant acting.
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80It still sounds pretty fresh: politicians scratching backs, loose ladies threatening to talk, careers balanced tremulously on the line
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80Parker has shaped the play to make it more film-friendly and relevant, but he has done so with such subtlety you would have to be a Wilde authority even to notice.
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80Parker stays with and even streamlines Wilde's clever manipulations of betrayals and lies and plots and counterplots. Yet the film never feels stagy.
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80The political, social, and linguistic adjustments Parker makes to this hugely entertaining Husband give it fresh relevance without betraying the original.
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75The two leading men, Northam and Everett, are smooth and charming.
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70It's lavish, clever entertainment, a welcome opportunity to laugh without shame.
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70The film is not without its problems, some inherent to Wilde's original play.
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70Our familiarity with the actors, and their comfort in this period setting, lend the piece an unexpected air of naturalism.
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70His film is hardly memorable, but it's amusing enough for two hours, and it never panders or cloys.
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70The film version of this civilized beauty, captures the amusing gloss of the story but not the sense that something grave is going on beneath it all.
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70Life at the top has rarely looked or sounded more fabulously elegant.
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70The movie is diverting enough -- it's good fun -- but much of the genius is gone with the wind.
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70We are amused. We are not sputtering into our teacups, but we are chortling lightly.
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70The only problem I was faced with was trying to understand what exactly it was that I enjoyed, and how this movie differed from the play I'd read.
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60Beautifully appointed, fairly bursting with splendid sets and divine costumes, but it ultimately fails to capture the essence of Wilde's airy wit.
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50Director- writer Oliver Parker saps much of the juice from Wilde, slows the pace and directs his actors in an inappropriately naturalistic style.
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50Leans so heavily on its stars that their performances are marred by their emptiness.
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This big-screen version of Wilde's stylish match of deceit and honor, loyalty and betrayal, is more parry than thrust.
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50An ideal play is degraded into an indolent film
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20Parker has boiled An Ideal Husband into a thuddingly unimaginative costume drama laden with frocks, riding crops, servile butlers and very good actors desperately treading water.