The working title for this film might have been 'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations as Spoken by Brits in Italy'.
A Good Woman (2005)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:79
Fresh:30
Rotten:49
Average Rating:5.3/10
Consensus: This adaptation of Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan lacks bite due to liberties taken with the source material, coupled with uneven performances.
Rated: PG [See Full Rating] for thematic material, sensuality and language
Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Feb 3, 2006 Limited
Box Office: $97,060
Synopsis: Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson fight over the same rich young man in this sumptuously elegant and loose adaptation of Oscar Wilde's LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN. The setting for the action is moved... Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson fight over the same rich young man in this sumptuously elegant and loose adaptation of Oscar Wilde's LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN. The setting for the action is moved from Victorian England's parlors to Italy's gorgeous Amalfi coast in the early 1930's. A vacationing American couple, the Windermeres (Johansson and Mark Umbers), meet scandal when caught up in a web of expatriate British slander after Mr. Windermere apparently starts having an affair with the notorious gold-digger, Mrs. Erlynne (Hunt). Meanwhile, the debauched Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore) takes it upon himself to comfort the tearful and lovely Mrs. Windermere, and Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson), an older member of the British circle, sees there's a sweet woman being hurt by all the malicious gossip and falls for Mrs. Erlynne himself. The gossip may be malicious, but no one writes it as well as Wilde, and here his famed quips--many flown in from other plays--flourish in wild abundance. Johansson is a knockout, and there are lots of elegant costumes and intricately decorated Italian villas, all captured in an enticingly dusky cinematographic style. Performances vary in stylistic approach, with Wilkinson carrying the day as the well-intentioned, self-effacing Tuppy, the vulnerable human center of this dizzying ring of barbed witticisms and elegant subterfuge. [More]
Starring: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Moore
Starring: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Moore, Stephen Campbell Moore, Mark Umbers, John Standing
Director: Mike Barker
Director: Mike Barker
Story: Oscar Wilde
Screenwriter: Howard Himelstein
Composer: Richard G. Mitchell
Studio: Lions Gate Films
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Reviews for A Good Woman
It's brief, frivolous, and extremely entertaining even as some of it seems forced, and the film lacks the elegance of Wilde's wordplay.
The famous Oscar Wilde wit tempered with gorgeous Italian sunsets. You could do worse.
This could have been an amusing, old-fashioned drawing room farce but fails for two reasons: Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson.
...offers the stunning scenery of the Amalfi coast and the thoroughly entertaining, completely endearing performance of Tom Wilkinson..
The production is beautifully costumed and cast, and Hunt acquits herself quite nicely while playing entirely against type.
A Good Woman suffers from a staggeringly bad miscasting of its central role and from a cut-and-paste screenplay that substitutes random insertions of Wilde epigrams for character.
Something is wrong with A Good Woman: The lightning never strikes. It's never quite alive.
The third and very least of the films based on Lady Windermere's Fan, A Good Woman proves itself to be downright bad.
The movie is gorgeous to look at, the script has a killer twist and the cast is competent.
Wilde isn't supposed to be lovely, or charming. He's supposed to be funny, wicked, rude and as full of serious feeling as a lavender butterfly.
A good woman (or a good movie) may not be as hard to find as a good man, but you have to know where to look. This is worth checking out.
A Good Woman is such a dreary affair that it makes you wonder whether the last Wilde adaptation -- the critically lambasted The Importance of Being Earnest with Reese Witherspoon -- was really that bad after all.
Besides the consuming, universal glibness of its characters, A Good Woman is also undermined by some ditsy casting.
A Good Woman won't ruin anyone's day, but it won't make anyone's either, and it won't get the great Irish playwright anything like the admiration his work deserves.
As a rule I’m a pushover for Oscar Wilde’s brand of high-flown drollery. But A Good Woman, director Mike Barker’s film version of Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, left me high, dry and grumpy.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 25% 25% | Four Christmases |
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| 95% 95% | Star Trek |
| 14% 14% | The Ugly Truth |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 32% 32% | Terminator Salvation |
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
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