Bright Young Things (2003)
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Reviews Counted: 108
Fresh: 71 | Rotten: 37
Colored with witty performances and a camp sense of satire, Stephen Fry's version of Evelyn Waugh's novel may only be fitfully successful but it does mark a promising debut for the British comic.
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 13
Colored with witty performances and a camp sense of satire, Stephen Fry's version of Evelyn Waugh's novel may only be fitfully successful but it does mark a promising debut for the British comic.
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Movie Info
British writer/actor Stephen Fry makes his feature-film debut with the witty, sophisticated comedy Bright Young Things, adapted from Evelyn Waugh's 1930 novel Vile Bodies. Set in London during the '30s, this stylish period film follows an ensemble cast of well-dressed and highly literate partygoers. Aspiring writer Adam Fenwick-Symes (stage actor Stephen Campbell Moore) loses the manuscript of his first novel when traveling through customs. He then sets out to raise enough money to marry his
Cast
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Emily Mortimer
Nina Blount -
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James McAvoy
Simon Balcairn -
Michael Sheen
Miles -
David Tennant
Ginger Littlejohn -
Fenella Woolgar
Agatha Runcible -
Jim Carter
Chief Customs Officer -
Julia McKenzie
Lottie Crump -
Peter O'Toole
Colonel Blount -
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All Critics (114) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (72) | Rotten (38) | DVD (12)
The 'wit' is leaden and unfunny; the narrative's progress ungainly; the direction stolid.
Top CriticOne conceit of writer-director Stephen Fry is to dramatize parties as knots of chaos, social hurricanes that spill across the landscape this way and that, ruining lives, eating time, preventing progress of any kind.
Though Fry's movie has plenty of nasty wit, it lacks the sheer luxurious malice of Waugh's book. Fry is acerbic; Waugh is lethal.
Suffers from feeling like it's just pretending to be good when it's obviously much, much happier being bad. But when it's bad, it's very, very good.
Its chief strength is the obvious deep-seated affection Fry has for each sedated, hung-over soul.
If you yearn for a Brit fix, this is your flick. If not, think twice before checking it out.
Fry seems to believe there's nothing that would fulfill audiences more than to vicariously tag along on screen after fictionalized celebrity types from another time.
Though it falls short of Fry's best work in other fields, this is a sound first feature.
The wit never comes through the art deco settings.
If a movie can draw this kind of talent for mostly miniscule roles, how can you go wrong?
The film is a breezy and likable enough entertainment, especially for those of us unfamiliar with Waugh's original.
It is in the humorous moments that the movie really hits its stride, with the supporting cast providing many of the laughs.
The uninitiated are hereby warned: Bright Young Things has an exclusionary timbre. Unlike Hollywood films it never slows down to explain a joke or clarify an allusion.
Fry often seems unsure of whether he wants to stress satire or drama, and while a good film can be both, this film is neither.
A great deal of fun for its first two-thirds.
Fry seems to believe there's nothing that would fulfill audiences more than to vicariously tag along on screen after fictionalized celebrity types from another time.
Memorable characters come and go so often and so franticaly that you wonder if World War II might have been merely the explosion of England's fast pulse.
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