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90The real importance of "Earnest" is the thrill of brilliant repartee. And as we laugh, an amazing thing happens: Oscar Wilde comes alive.
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90Director Oliver Parker (An Ideal Husband) -- who also adapted the screenplay to include aspects from Wilde's unrevised four-act version of the play -- embraces the material with great gusto, delivering as charming and irresistible a film as one could demand.
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It's a jaunty adaptation, almost screwball.
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75The important thing about "The Importance" is that all depends on the style of the actors, and Oliver Parker's film is well cast.
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75Hearing Wilde's pithy lines in her mouth -- ''London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained 35 for years'' -- is worth the ticket price. In the end it's Dench who reminds us of the importance of enjoying Oscar Wilde.
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75A delightful alternative to most current multiplex fare, which wouldn't recognize a juicy bon mot if it tripped over one in the aisle.
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75With all this raw material, it's a puzzlement and an annoyance that Parker feels so obligated to interpose fantastic elements and comic action sequences and other tacky touches. As a result, while this "Earnest" is lively fun, it never quite feels sufficiently important.
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70Mercifully, the supporting cast saves the day by grasping clearly that in a comedy of manners you have to act mannered, though not to the point of situation comedy.
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70Everett, whose scenes with Firth are a droll delight, nails every sly laugh. And Witherspoon adds her own legally blond American sparkle to this British party.
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70The film seems content with the more modest ambitions of a romantic comedy, albeit one with unusually potent wit and intricate construction. The old Ealing could never have afforded Parker's deluxe treatment of the material; the new Ealing seems to have forgotten the benefits of economy.
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70Tonally, however, Earnest boasts perfect pitch, thanks mainly to the blithe, nimble actors.
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70The result is a film that is at best highly uneven and perversely at odds with itself. Luckily, Wilde's delicious sense of absurdity and peerlessly witty dialogue are pretty indestructible, and "Earnest" itself remains a peerless comedy of manners.
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70For 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.
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67Great fun, but it's just a tad this side of being overproduced.
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63Resonates and inspires rapid-fire bouts of laughter, perhaps even a few giggles from the author himself, whom posterity has rewarded the last laugh.
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63Written to skewer the upper class of its time, the script is now just a broad joke-fest, clever lines batted back and forth like badminton shuttlecocks.
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63Wilde's masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, may be the best play of the 19th century. It's so good that its relentless, polished wit can withstand not only inept school productions, but even Oliver Parker's movie adaptation.
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63Despite good taste and good will, this romp through Victorian parlors frequently falls flat on its rump.
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63With this cast, this director, and this source material, I expected to be swept away on a wave of enchantment, but nothing close to that happened.
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63Amounts to a complete misreading of Wilde, who used the conventions of artifice to lampoon artificiality. Parker totally misses the point by tacking on such cinematic curlicues -- apparently, in his eagerness to seem movie-friendly, he's too hung up on the importance of not being earnest.
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63Parker's afraid that we'll be bored by the language alone, so he throws in absurdities.
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60Everett remains a perfect Wildean actor, and a relaxed Firth displays impeccable comic skill.
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60This well-cast adaptation somehow feels obvious and overblown.
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60This may be a less than ideal “Earnest,” but it still has delights, not least of all Anna Massey’s Miss Prism, Cecily’s dotty tutor, and Tom Wilkinson’s Dr. Chasuble, her clergyman admirer.
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50These actors have a firm playful grasp and a palpable affection for their characters' befuddled dignity and attraction. They understand what Wilde meant by the importance of being earnest.
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50The antics are wacky -- but far from Wilde.
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40In all his misguided enthusiasm, Parker has mustered enough bluster to fill up a zeppelin, blowing harder and harder, for something more and more fanciful. But with so much hot air, the bubble is bound to burst, and so it does in Parker's blundering adaptation.
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40Parker "opens up" a play that was perfectly wonderful closed down. Wilde subtitled his masterpiece "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People." This movie seems intent on being a trivial comedy for trivial people.
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25The result is a frustrating, boring mess.
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20A comedy in the last century and a drama in the new one. At least, that's the dumbfounding impression left by writer-director Oliver Parker's utterly miscalculated film adaptation of Wilde's play.
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