Bright Young Things [DVD] [2003]

Stephen Fry's directorial debut didn't cause much of a splash at the box office, and received a fairly thorough critical panning. I had no plans to see this film due to the press criticism, but when I eventually got around to it, I was very pleasantly surprised.

The film rattles along at a great pace, with fantastic characters and great acting - Stephen Campbell Moore is a great lead, and Fenella Woolgar's Agatha Runcible is one of the funniest characters I've seen in a film.

The story is set in the 20s, but deals with the mores of our age - celebrity, decadence and style over substance. The film also looks amazing - capturing the colour, dazzle and decadence of the period. The visual richness is reminiscent of the deep colours and glitter used in Cabaret.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bright Young Things got bad reviews because of Stephen Fry - maybe critics don't want 'director' added to his already bulging CV. Don't believe the hype! See the film!

This is a stylish, satirical and thoughtful movie about people not worth thinking too much about. We're in London in the Thirties. The wealthy, bored young spawn of the upper crust flit from party to party, keeping the dawn at bay and amusing each other with their brittleness and wit. We're in the middle of high society, "that uneasy alliance of bright young things and old survivors."

Adam Fenwick-Symes (Stephen Campbell Moore) wants to be a writer, hasn't a penny, but whose friends are all among the "things." He loves Nina Blount (Emily Mortimer), a young woman who would rather be bored and rich than bored and poor. (She finally marries a very boring, aristocratic young man, Ginger Littlejohn, who is rich. "Oh, darling," she says to Adam, "if only you were as rich as Ginger...or even half as rich.")

Throughout the movie Adam finds himself in situations where he comes close to money and loses it, whether it's gambling in a hotel which has wonderfully loose morals to working as Mr. Chatterbox, a gossip columnist for a press lord. His friends are fun and stylish, but also shallow, condescending and oblivious to any feelings except their own. "You bloody people," one person finally says to them, "Who the bloody hell do you think you are?" As the Thirties pass into the 1939 invasion of Poland and Britain's declaration war, the parties stop. Bad things happen and real life takes over. But eventually Adam and Nina find their way together, without money.

I liked this movie a lot. It has great style and dialogue, and things keep moving. It was based on Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies. The characters are superficial but after a while you get to know them. There are first-rate actors portraying these bright young things, including Michael Sheen as Miles, a wealthy young queen, and Fenella Woolgar as Agatha Runciple, a young woman without a reflective thought in her head. There are also wonderful performances by some well-known names in smaller parts: Jim Broadbent as an alcoholic colonel who shows up several times, Jim Carter as a filth-hating customs supervisor, Peter O'Toole as somewhat balmy aristocrat who isn't as eccentric as he appears, Simon Callow as the deposed king of Anatolia, and John Mills in a brief but funny bit as an old aristocrat at a party who mistakes a sniff of cocaine for a sniff of snuff.

The DVD picture and audio are first-rate.

I do mind, but perhaps not "terribly," that Waugh's satyrical, absurd masterpiece has been reduced to an entertaining, engaging, but not at all deep or thought-provoking flick. The cast is superb, especially James McAvoy as the neurotic Early of Balcairn whose "swan song" comes across with a keen balance between pathos, irony, and the ridiculous. Discovering Fry, director and screenwriter, in the small but in a way crucial role of the limousine chaffeur, is a neat surprise which puts a tiny twist on the viewer's experience. Fenella Woolgar's Agatha Runcible is perhaps a little weak and vague at times, but she remains the loveable and tragically victimized bright young thing of the novel. Julia McKenzie's Lottie Crump is a delight - but that's one comical character which would be hard to spoil.

The rest of the cast is equally brilliant, and the movie, on the whole, is a feast for the eyes of any fan of the British cinema. However, it is not a feast for the intellect of any fan of Waugh. Perhaps it's just as well - Waugh should be enjoyed through the page, not the screen - and I wouldn't mind if the changes made to the original storyline were not so terribly out of tune with it. But they are. Especially the ending, dripping with syrupy sentiment as sticky as the wax of the milliard candles wasted on that scene, is bound to annoy anyone who has read and loved "Vile Bodies." A little less of burlesque and sentimentality, a little less of P. G. Wodehouse and a little more of Evelyn Waugh, and this could have been a brilliant adaptation.