| 90 |
Variety
Shines like a freshly minted coin in Oliver Parker's adaptation.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
It's a movie of uncommon eloquence and elegance, acted by a truly gifted cast.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Makes the translation with all its wit, incisive dialogue and eccentric characters intact, and then some.
|
| 80 |
Rolling Stone
What shakes the dust off this period piece is the vibrant acting.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Parker 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.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
Parker stays with and even streamlines Wilde's clever manipulations of betrayals and lies and plots and counterplots. Yet the film never feels stagy.
|
| 80 |
Salon.com
It 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.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
It still sounds pretty fresh: politicians scratching backs, loose ladies threatening to talk, careers balanced tremulously on the line
|
| 80 |
New Times (L.A.)
The political, social, and linguistic adjustments Parker makes to this hugely entertaining Husband give it fresh relevance without betraying the original.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The two leading men, Northam and Everett, are smooth and charming.
|
| 70 |
New York Magazine
Our familiarity with the actors, and their comfort in this period setting, lend the piece an unexpected air of naturalism.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
The 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.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
We are amused. We are not sputtering into our teacups, but we are chortling lightly.
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
His film is hardly memorable, but it's amusing enough for two hours, and it never panders or cloys.
|
| 70 |
Slate
The movie is diverting enough -- it's good fun -- but much of the genius is gone with the wind.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
Life at the top has rarely looked or sounded more fabulously elegant.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
It's lavish, clever entertainment, a welcome opportunity to laugh without shame.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
The 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.
|
| 70 |
Film Threat
The film is not without its problems, some inherent to Wilde's original play.
|
| 60 |
Newsweek
Andrea C. Basora
Beautifully appointed, fairly bursting with splendid sets and divine costumes, but it ultimately fails to capture the essence of Wilde's airy wit.
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
Hollis Chacona
This big-screen version of Wilde's stylish match of deceit and honor, loyalty and betrayal, is more parry than thrust.
|
| 50 |
Time
An ideal play is degraded into an indolent film
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Director- writer Oliver Parker saps much of the juice from Wilde, slows the pace and directs his actors in an inappropriately naturalistic style.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Examiner
Leans so heavily on its stars that their performances are marred by their emptiness.
|
| 20 |
LA Weekly
Parker 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.
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