By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * )
When he made Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, Oliver Parker did it straight. Three years later, with another of Wilde's comedies to play with, the writer-director — perhaps that should be rewriter-director — thinks he knows better than the playwright. He adds a
number of scenes and incidents to Wilde's "trivial play for serious people," his stinging and insightful portrait of the English aristocracy.
The film revolves around two friends, rich and intense Jack Worthing (Colin Firth) and less well-off, more frivolous Algernon Moncrieff (Rupert Everett). To get out of the country house, Jack invents a brother, Ernest, and pretends to visit him in London. When he gets to town he takes the name "Ernest", meets up with Algy and sets about romancing Gwendolen Fairfax (Frances O'Connor). When Algy twigs, he hotfoots it to the country, likewise pretending to be Ernest, to chat up Jack's young ward, Cecily (Reese Witherspoon).
To get to Gwendolin, Jack/ Ernest must pass go, into the formidable form of her mother, Lady Bracknell (a part Wilde could have written for Judi Dench). She has written him off because of his uncertain background — he was found, as a baby, in a handbag at Victoria Station.
The usual members of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts Old Boys XI (Edward Fox, Tom Wilkinson) have fun with some of Wilde's best one-liners and Reese Witherspooon is
surprisingly good at keeping up with them.
In the end, the director should have read one more paragraph of Wilde: "While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at." Of course, Wilde was talking about himself.
* DVD, video. Rental: today
* DVD features: movie (97min); Making of ...; audio commentary with writer/ director Parker; "sneak peeks" of Pinocchio, Kate and Leopold, An Ideal Husband, Mansfield Park, Project: Greenlight.
