"The Importance of Being Earnest" is basically an adaptation of the Oscar Wilde's play for the screen, in other words, a stagy film. Nothing wrong with that, many films succeeded quite well this way, but here the caricatural acting spoils the overall effect. This is a theatrical film with performances that could work well on the stage, aided by the complicity and laughter of an audience. The acting could be even exaggerated if the film were made differently.
"The Importance of Being Earnest" should have used fully the possibilities allowed by the play - respectability, social conventions, cynicism, hypocrisy, joie de vivre .... all living together under the same roof. This could have been dynamite if it had been handled right.
Unfortunately, the actors are quick in using voices, smiles, eyebrows... to enhance every comic situation - this was not necessary! Oscar Wilde's play needs no underlining. In the "Importance of Being Earnest" there's a crescendo that should be considered. It starts as a light comedy, growing up slowly (innuendos and double entendres contend with respectability) ending finally in an explosion of laughter bursting out of a cathedral of joy. When I read the play as a teenager I liked it a lot - so much, in fact, that I read it again some years ago and I was hoping to repeat the fun with this film.
Well, this did not occur. The film is just slightly funny. The story should be treated with the daring and irreverence that were Oscar Wilde's qualities. What we see instead is a "classic" comedy more appropriate perhaps for a museum.
"The Importance of Being Earnest" should have used fully the possibilities allowed by the play - respectability, social conventions, cynicism, hypocrisy, joie de vivre .... all living together under the same roof. This could have been dynamite if it had been handled right.
Unfortunately, the actors are quick in using voices, smiles, eyebrows... to enhance every comic situation - this was not necessary! Oscar Wilde's play needs no underlining. In the "Importance of Being Earnest" there's a crescendo that should be considered. It starts as a light comedy, growing up slowly (innuendos and double entendres contend with respectability) ending finally in an explosion of laughter bursting out of a cathedral of joy. When I read the play as a teenager I liked it a lot - so much, in fact, that I read it again some years ago and I was hoping to repeat the fun with this film.
Well, this did not occur. The film is just slightly funny. The story should be treated with the daring and irreverence that were Oscar Wilde's qualities. What we see instead is a "classic" comedy more appropriate perhaps for a museum.