Rating: 
Summary: A Fun Movie To Watch
Review: This movie is so much fun to watch for you aren't sure what will happen in the end. I kept thinking how I wish the male star was in true life a romantic lover of women, for he gave such a great performance as a romantic leading male star. We women sure are missing out on having good leading males in the romantic catagories. There are about six really good romantic leading men. Nevertheless, you will enjoy this movie and will find the story line good. The females actors did an excellent job with their parts. I liked it very much.
Rating: 
Summary: Crisp Adaptation of a Marvelous Play
Review: Oliver Parker has developed a wonderfully witty and crisply delivered adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play. Key performances include Julianne Moore, as a conniving blackmailer, Jeremy Northam, as the successful, yet imperiled government minister, Oliver Parker has developed a wonderfully witty and crisply delivered adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play. Key performances include Julianne Moore, as a conniving blackmailer, Jeremy Northam, as the successful, yet imperiled government minister, Cate Blanchett, as the adoring and trusting wife, and Rupert Everett, as the best friend of Northam's character who gets caught up in the middle of the whole fiasco despite the fact that he would rather be idling away his time and disappointing his father. Minnie driver also adds a fun twist of love-interest to help maintain an environment in disarray. The performances by Everett and Moore are both engaging and memorable. This film adaptation allows for vocal variances that would actually exist in such a scenario, allowing an emotional roller coaster that builds to a fortuitous finish.
Rating:
Summary: civilized entertainment
Review: Based on the Oscar Wilde play of the same name, "An Ideal Husband" scores as a moderately entertaining drawing room comedy thanks to the elegance of its design and the performances of its first rate cast. Although it contains many elements of a classic Feydeau farce - comic misunderstandings, delicately timed missteps, hairbreadth missed encounters - the film lacks the kinetic energy necessary to allow these elements to completely shine through. Instead, we are treated to a more laid back, more traditionally British interpretation of the events. Indeed, the real charm of the film lies in its sharp observation of British gentility thinly disguising the often honey-tongued brutality lying just below the placid surface of this society. No one smiles more sincerely or maintains such immense social poise while slicing one's opponents to shreds than the elite of England - and this quality director Oliver Parker captures in complete fidelity to Wilde's overall vision.Jeremy Northam portrays a highly respected and happily married member of the House of Commons who is suddenly confronted with a moral dilemma: should he allow a blackmailer to expose an egregiously immoral action in his past, thereby ensuring the ruination of both his career and his marriage, or should he go along with the blackmailer's demands and publicly support a cause he knows to be highly unethical and injurious to both his people and his nation? Julianne Moore portrays the woman who waltzes suddenly into his life and attempts to threaten him into supporting a doomed canal project to protect her own financial investment. Rupert Everett also stars as a confirmed bachelor who manages to become intricately involved in everyone's affairs. The film succeeds most when it concentrates on the stuffiness of the stiff-upper-lipped British tradition juxtaposed to the single-minded viciousness of the Moore character. She delivers a delightful interpretation of an amoral woman utilizing cruelty to achieve her desired ends, fitting perfectly into a morally topsy-turvy world which feasts on scandal and the ruination of its own members, yet where a mismatched tea set stands as the ultimate in moral turpitude. Wilde, on the other end of the morality spectrum, also subtly jabs at the unrealistic obsession with virtue in the character of Northam's impossibly pure wife (Cate Blanchett); she erects so high a moral pedestal for her husband to stand upon that it is only after she has been caught in a moral infraction herself that the world these characters inhabit can come back into any sort of balance. The film is probably least effective when trying to cope with the complex interweaving and overlapping of the characters and their situations. Packer simply does not provide the manic energy and chaotic pacing necessary to make such plot mechanics soar on screen. As a result, "An Ideal Husband" is more likable as a genteel British comedy of manners than the unbridled drawing room farce it seems so often to want to be. Still, this is a film to be savored and enjoyed on many levels.
Rating: 
Summary: Wilde was wilder
Review: A vain attempt to straighten out Oscar. Or at least tidy him up a bit. This adaptation takes out the obvious machinations of the play, and presents us with an extremely pallid "real" version.Why? The very definition of Wilde's art was in its artifice. That said, there are some saving graces. A delightfully witchy Julianne Moore (who keeps proving she can do ANYTHING). A lovely Cate Blanchett taking a cypher of a character and making you believe. But other eyebrows were way too arched. And why did I get the distinct impression that the cameraman was having a torrid affair with Rupert Everett?
Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly Disappointing
Review: This is the kind of movie that is usually right up my alley but everyone in this movie seemed bored with the exception of Julianna Moore as the vindictive vixen. The plot saves it with a few interesting twists.
Rating:
Summary: One of the finest films I have seen - ever
Review: In a day when good writing seems to be a thing of the past, when plots are predictable and formulated, this movie is a refreshing change. The plot was entirely unpredictable always leaving one at the edge of his seat wondering what was about to happen next. The acting was flawless. Even Minnie Driver who made me think that as an actress she would be a good waitress in Good Will Hunting, redeemed herself. It is one of those films in which the viewer becomes totally immersed and forgets that he is watching a movie. The immoral character who later, reluctantly, displayed morals and found himself left with nothing for his efforts was a brilliant stroke of irony.
Rating:
Summary: Splendid
Review: Oscar Wilde's wit shines from the very pages of his works, but the best way to enjoy him, in my opinion, is to see a performance of one of his plays. This movie is excellent, featuring a cast with the chutzpah to pull off some of Wilde's wackiest lines, and the bizarre intrigues come to life without seeming too surreal. Happy viewing!
Rating:
Summary: Well-done! Not the least bit worse than Wilde's play itself
Review: It is a perfect adaptation, as I far as I am concerned. Every actor is well-suited for his/her part. The film is dynamic and live. Altough Wilde's play enjoyed enormous theater success [still does], I thought that making it into a film would be a hard task. It probably was, but filmmakers have done an excellent job this time. I must also say that costumes are simply fantastic. The three very beautiful women, Blanchett, Moore and Driver, look absolutely divine in their dresses. I think that designers deserved to win an Oscar for creating such a Wilde-lesque beauty on screen. And, of course, Everett is the most Wilde-lesque actor of them all, right now. If he lived in the late 19 century, he would have been Wilde's leading man in the theater, I am sure. If you love Oscar Wilde, watch this film: you will be delighted. His wonderful play lives here once again, thanks to the filmmakers's efforts.
Rating:
Summary: Charming film, beautifully filmed
Review: The publicity for this film led me to expect quite a different story -- one where Rupert Everett is chased by women intent on marriage. Ho-hum. The film is nothing like it. Jeremy Northam is a man who in youth committed an error of judgement, on which his success and fortune is now based. He is being called to task by Julianne Moore, who does a superb job as the self-serving blackmailer. Cate Blanchette as Northam's wife is forced to choose between her hard-nosed ethics and her love (and she is deeply in love with her husband, he with her, in the sort of charming relationship one rarely sees in a Hollywood production). Then Everett hovers about, a lazy, highly opinionated, and amusingly narcissistic man who finds himself the hero and in love, all in the course of just a few days of his life. A big about-face for a man who seemed so strongly focused on his playboyish, trivial but apparently satisfying lifestyle. Minnie Driver is his love interest, although their whole relationship develops from bickering, to revelation, to romance, right before our eyes. All five main characters are well balanced throughout the film, and all actors play their roles exceedingly well. The men are human, not superheros; the women are tough and intelligent. Emotions play along healthily in each scene, as the story progresses to the will-he, won't-he scene, then beyond to the repercussions and finally the ending, when everyone good-humoredly discovers and accepts that they are all only human. Lovely, entertaining film.
Rating:
Summary: Rupert Everett is Fabulous As British Lord!
Review: People have asked me if this movie failed to work for me because Rupert Everett, who is openly gay, plays a straight hero in Oscar Wilde's work. I tell them, "Not at all!" He makes this whole movie and is entirely believable as the male lead. I normally like Jeremy Northam really well too, the other male lead, but Everett upstages him as the romantic and comedic lead at every point in the film. I have sent lots of women to the video store to rent this movie and not one of them has been anything but wildly enthusiastic about the movie and Everett after seeing it. This is a "must-see" AND "must-own" movie. I already own a copy which I bought after renting it twice!
|
