The Importance Of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde’s frivolous but lightly amusing meditation on Victorian manners hasn’t dated all that brilliantly: the legendary Wildean wit still comes through, but the stuffy middle-class milieu he set out to satirise lacks relevance for a modern audience.

As competent as it’s wholly unmemorable, as a movie, The Importance of Being Earnest is best categorised as a solid, bogstandard British period/costume yarn, with occasional gems of wit to enliven the affair. It stars inexplicable heart-throb Colin Firth (Bridget Jones, TV’s Pride and Prejudice) as Jack, a respectable affluent country gent who beomes engaged to Gwendolen (Frances O’Connor), who is smitten chiefly by his name (Earnest, as far as she knows).

Rupert Everett then turns up to complicate the picture as Algy, Jack’s friend, who also adopts the guise of Earnest: Reese Witherspoon’s character completes the confusing quartet, while ‘Dame’ Judi Dench hams it up as formidably as ever as the redoubtable Lady Bracknell.

Well-acted and competently directed, this particular Earnest – the first since 1952 – won’t disappont or let down any hardcore Wilde fans, but neither is it likely to have the kids queueing round the block.