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06/19/08
An Ideal Husband (1999)
92
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:13
Fresh:12
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.5/10
Consensus: Brevity is the soul of wit, eh? This adaptation gets to the nitty gritty of Wilde's stage piece and plays on eternal human foibles.
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Sir Robert Chiltern (Northam) is a successful Government minister with a loving wife. He is threatened when a lady (Moore) appears with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help... [More]
Starring: Rupert Everett, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver
Director: Oliver Parker
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Reviews for An Ideal Husband
1 - 16 (sorted by date)
Top CriticParker has made a sensible cinematic translation of Wilde's play, intercutting scenes which would have been played consecutively on the stage.
07/21/05
Top CriticClick to read the article
11/06/02
Top Critic[I]t's likely that Mr. Wilde, who once wrote, 'A poet can survive anything but a misprint,' would have been less than thrilled with the result.
03/19/02
Top CriticClick to read the article
05/11/01
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05/10/01
Top CriticWilde was always about lots more than witty repartee, and as sparkling as his play is as drawing-room comedy, it reveals his concern with the timeless values of unselfish love and forgiveness.
02/14/01
Top Critic[The] film is hardly memorable, but it's amusing enough for two hours, and it never panders or cloys.
01/01/00
Top Critic[T]his Husband plods and ambles and bears the burden of a soundtrack that resembles a wimpy meditation tape.
01/01/00
Top CriticClick to read the article
01/01/00
Top CriticMuch of the four acts of An Ideal Husband, a serious comedy, is constructed out of flip one-liners, most of which remain, though Parker has added a few, all unworthy of the master.
01/01/00
Top CriticOur familiarity with the actors, and their comfort in this period setting, lend the piece an unexpected air of naturalism.
01/01/00
Top CriticAn Ideal Husband works because Wilde created an expert mechanism (kind of slow-motion serious screwball comedy) for manipulating the plot and characters.
01/01/00
Top CriticClick to read the article
01/01/00
Top CriticParker, who himself adapted Wilde's play for the movie, takes what to purists may be an unforgivable number of liberties with the story, fleshing out the plot and even adding dialogue.
01/01/00
Top CriticIn adapting the play, Mr. Parker has streamlined and rewritten Wilde's dialogue, keeping some (but not all) of Wilde's biting epigrams and scraping off a lot (perhaps too much) of the Victorian crust.
01/01/00
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01/01/00
Top Critic1 - 16 (sorted by date)
Latest News for An Ideal Husband
May 13, 2005:
Trailer Bulletin: "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"
Right here at Rotten Tomatoes you can enjoy the all-new trailer for the upcoming and highly anticipated movie version of C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion,... More...
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