Comedy
I forgot to mention: last night at the movie, one of the previews was for a new upcoming film of The Importance of Being Earnest. Now, this is all to the good, and it's even better that it'll star Rupert Everett (mmm), Colin Firth (mmm again), and Judi Dench, who's terrific. But there were two unfortunately evident flaws:
- Another of the stars is Reese Witherspoon. Don't get me wrong, I like Reese Witherspoon fine, but I haven't seen much evidence that she's much of a classical actor. (This is embarrassing: I just realized that I've been confusing her with Drew Barrymore for some time now. Oops.)
- Much more importantly: we sat through a full-length preview for this movie, and the preview contained one line that made me chuckle. Earnest is one of the funniest plays ever written; if they couldn't put together a preview that provided more than one laugh, something is seriously wrong with this movie.
I'm not surprised to discover that the screenplay is written by Oliver Parker (who's also directing), who wrote and directed An Ideal Husband. My dim recollection of that movie was that it was a perfectly good movie, but that (as I discovered later, upon reading the play) it was only loosely based on the original play, and a large number of funny lines were cut. I'm not sure I can bring myself to watch a version of Earnest that receives the same treatment.