| 90 |
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.
|
| 88 |
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.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
This is a wickedly funny skewering of a prewar London society gone mad with frivolity.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A brilliant, giddy satiric romp with a discreetly moralistic viewpoint beneath its high-style wit.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
A witty, energetic adaptation.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Fry's film has the frantic energy and kaleidoscopic style of Waugh's feverish prose.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Acridly funny.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Both script and direction are the work of the glittering comedic polymath Stephen Fry.
|
| 75 |
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.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Engaging, energetic film.
|
| 70 |
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.
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
There's no denying that Fry's movie is all the livelier for its gay embellishment.
|
| 70 |
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.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
The film stumbles a bit in its third act, when war kills the good times for good.
|
| 63 |
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
It fails to dig beneath that surface picture and offer up anything in the way of explanation or motivation.
|
| 60 |
Film Threat
Daniel Wible
Fun, giddy, and intoxicating as the endless soirees in which it revels.
|
| 60 |
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.
|
| 60 |
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.
|
| 58 |
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.
|
| 50 |
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.
|
| 50 |
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.
|
| 50 |
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.
|
| 50 |
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.
|
| 50 |
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.
|
| 40 |
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.
|
| 40 |
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
Under his (Fry’s) direction this 2003 British feature becomes a flat, depressing affair.
|
| 40 |
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.
|
| 30 |
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.
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