Writer/director Oliver Parker's thought process seems to have been, "The Importance of Being Earnest is a silly play. Therefore, I should add more silly things, even if they have nothing to do with the story, the time period, or... anything." (What, has he been watching Titus?) Well, I say do whatever foolish frippery you will to the play -- tattoos, ragtime music, juvenile fantasy sequences -- but goddamn you, keep that damn skeevy mustache off my Rupert!
Still, the mustache, aesthetically offensive as it is, serves a purpose: to make Rupert look that much more devastating when he shaves it off. And to compensate once the dread mustache is removed, the costume designers put him in dashing adventurer's clothes, swashbuckling leather jackets and such, for which they should win an Oscar, while he gets to be all seductive and bedroom-eyed, which is fine new material for my dreams. He's not quite as much fun as he was in An Ideal Husband, but to be fair, he doesn't get as many good lines.
Dame Judi Dench gets the lion's share of those, and she carries them off beautifully, with her typical imperiousness (I think Dench and Rupert should film every Oscar Wilde play). The best scene in the movie is between Colin Firth as John Worthing and Dench as Lady Bracknell, grilling him on his suitability to marry her daughter (Frances O'Connor, who's also quite good), where Dench gets to utter Wilde's famous line: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness." All the actors ham it up mercilessly, particularly Rupert, although Reese Witherspoon seems to have been concentrating on maintaining her accent (at which she does a creditable job) to the detriment of the rest of her performance. It's decent fun, sprinkled with Wilde's witticisms ("When I am in great trouble, I refuse everything except food and drink") -- until Parker ruins things with ill-advised, pointless, and just plain stupid flashbacks and fantasy sequences (where poor Rupert and Reese look ridiculous).
Well, Rupert and Colin Firth look handsome (they have one pose together that I could swear echoes Another Country), and the movie is reasonably enjoyable, but Parker did a much better job with An Ideal Husband. Too bad he couldn't have trusted the material to be fluffy and silly enough on its own, without larding it up with his own useless folderol. I don't completely agree with the savaging Glenn Kenny gave it in Premiere, but I'd add an extra star just for Rupert looking so damn smoldering, so adjust your assessment of my rating accordingly.
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