"The Importance of Being Earnest" is a movie version of the famous English comedy by Oscar Wilde

It's the first film to be produced by Ealing Studios for many years.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 06 September 2002

MARK LAWSON:
Ekow Eshun, it is a stand-by in theatres, does it make the case for a multiplex?

EKOW ESHUN:
It is farce masquerading as satire. The play itself is far more subtle in this film. The whole masquerade of being Earnest, when you read that into Wilde's life, it is all about his life, being a straight actor when you are gay. None of this is teased out in the film.

MARK LAWSON:
There is one flash when Rupert Everitt is propositioning Colin Firth.

EKOW ESHUN:
Instead we get a whole bunch of prat falling and mugging for the camera and mock fights. There is a moment when Colin Firth and Rupert Everitt are stuffing muffins into each other's faces.

It is a great laugh but what it amounts to is very, very little. It is lightweight. Forgettable, entirely without substance and entirely, crucially, without bite or edge.

MARK KERMODE:
I thought it achieved something incredible. 20 minutes into an Oscar Wilde play I hadn't laughed once.

After 30 minutes I wanted somebody to rush in with a chain saw and disembowel them. It was let's get out Judi Dench to say "handbag." Get Rupert Everitt because he always does Wilde.

Lets get out Colin Firth, who's the best thing. Let's get out Reece Witherspoon who's miscast and rubbish in this, but she has to get the teen audience in. Let's make the jokes flat and occasionally let's do fantasy sequences because we don't have faith in the text.

The worse thing is that it is almost made by people who don't think Oscar Wilde is any good but know he will get bums on seats, so they had better do an adaptation. I thought it was infuriating.

MARK LAWSON:
Rosie Boycott.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
I agree. The nightmare is that it is a lot of money chucked at thinking this is a safe way to get bums on seats and put these nice people in it and doll it up with English countryside and then try to give it a 21st century feel.

It made me fall a sleep for a few minutes which I rarely do in the movies.

MARK LAWSON:
In the theatre it is written to be punctuated by laughter, which is expected and then the actors feed off it. It is therefore hard to pace it I thought.

EKOW ESHUN:
I think it is not a very subtle reading of the play. The play is all about words. Here, he has gone for action instead.

It is a terrible misjudgement. Because yeah, how are you going to contemporise Oscar Wilde and make something that feels relevant to audiences in a mall.

He has put in a rag time score and put in lots of farce again. For me that's a shame because what happens is that the balance of the play falls off terribly, so that lady Bracknell, played by Judi Dench, becomes actually the most subtle character in the play.

She underplays entirely because she doesn't want to go to the physical theatre route of Rupert Everitt. So you get this weird thing, were the "handbag" moment is understated. It almost goes by.

MARK LAWSON:
She's reacting against Edith Evans and also possibly against stage.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
I thought Anna Massey as the Miss Prism character was good.

MARK KERMODE:
Although she appeared to be in an entirely different production.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
Yes but that bit was amusing to watch. When Anna Massey was on the screen things came alive. But she wasn't on for very long.