Product Details

• Actors: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances O'Connor (II), Reese Witherspoon, Judi Dench
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Miramax
• DVD Release Date: November 12, 2002
• Run Time: 97 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (210 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00006JDVX
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,578 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "The Importance of Being Earnest" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Mistaken identity carried to lovely, ludicrous extremes. This crisp adaptation of Oscar Wilde's classic comedy stars Colin Firth (The Turn of the Screw) as an English dandy who pretends to be his own brother, Earnest. Enter his best friend, played by Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding), who's also being Earnest for effect. Embellish the elegant country estate with two saucy—not to mention confused—young ladies and Dame Judi Dench as formidable Lady Bracknell. The results: a fluffy soufflé of wit and Wildean wisdom. 1-1/2 hours.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 74 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars The wages of pride November 24, 2002

By Candace601

Format:DVD

I cannot imagine a better cast for this film. That makes this dreadful travesty of Oscar Wilde's play even more appalling. Oliver Parker's hubris in thinking that he can improve on Oscar Wilde and one of the finest comedies in the English language is an outrage. He has cut some of Wilde's best lines, only to replace them with idiotic dream sequences, a ridiculous subplot involving Algernon's creditors, and even a hot-air ballon ride. Further, the production is heavy-handed and the music is just wrong.

All this pales in comparison to the overwhelming vulgarity of the scene in which Gwendolyn gets a tattoo, and fabricating a past as a chorus girl for Lady Bracknell. Mr. Parker clearly understands neither the characters, the play, nor Mr. Wilde himself. I can only conclude that his credit on An Ideal Husband is in error.

It is one thing to dig up Mr. Wilde's bones, but Mr. Parker has gnawed on them. He should be sentenced to a term in Reading Gaol for his overweening presumption and prohibited, by force if necessary, from ever again making another film.

31 of 36 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A misinterpretation of a great play May 1, 2003

By Dennis Littrell HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:VHS Tape

This is an inventive and artful production of Oscar Wilde's play, but I can confidently say that were Oscar Wilde alive today, he would be appalled at the misuse to which his play has been put. Indeed I think I feel the ground rumbling as he rolls over in his grave, and yes he is actually spinning in anguish.

Oliver Parker, who directed and wrote the screen adaptation, simply misinterpreted the play. He focused on the "dashing young bachelors" when the real focus of the play is Lady Bracknell, the absurd and beautifully ironic representation of the Victorian mind who was then and has been for over a hundred years Wilde's singular creation and one of the great characters of English literature. She is supposed to steal every scene she is in and we are to double take everyone of her speeches as we feel that she is simultaneous absurd and exactly right. Instead Judi Dench's Lady Bracknell (and I don't blame Dench who is a fine actress) is harsh and stern and literal to the point of being a controlling matriarch when what Wilde had in mind was somebody who was both pompous and almost idiotic yet capable of a penetrating and cynical wisdom (so like the author's). Compared to Dane Edith Evans's brilliant performance in the celebrated cinematic production from 1952, Dench's Lady Bracknell is positively one-dimensional.

The point of Wilde's play was to simultaneously delight and satirize the Victorian audience who came to watch the play. This is the genius of the play: the play-goer might view all of the values of bourgeois society being upheld while at the same time they are being made fun of. Not an easy trick, but that is why The Importance of Being Earnest is considered one of the greatest plays ever written. This attempt to turn it into a light entertainment for today's youthful audiences fails because this play is not a romantic comedy. It is more precisely a satire of a romantic comedy. Its point and Wilde's intent was to make fun of Victorian notions of romance and marrying well and to expose the mercantile nature of that society. It is probably impossible to "translate" the play for the contemporary film viewer since a satire of today's audiences and today's society would require an entirely different set of rapiers.

Parker's additions to the play amount to distractions that dilute the essence of the play's incomparable wit. Most of Wilde's witticisms are lost in the glare of Parker's busy work. Recalling Lady Bracknell as a dance hall girl in her youth who became pregnant before being wed was ridiculous and not only added nothing, but misinterpreted her character. Lady Bracknell is not a hypocrite with a compromised past. She is everything she pretends to be and that is the joke. Showing Algernon actually running through the streets to escape creditors or being threatened with debtor's prison was silly and again missed the point. Algy was "hard up" true and in need of "ready money" but his bills would be paid. Gwendolyn in goggles and cap driving a motor car also added nothing and seemed to place the play some years after the fact.

The big mistake movie directors often make when adapting a stage play into a movie is to feel compelled to get the play off the stage and out into the streets and countryside. Almost always these attempts are simply distractions. Some of the greatest adaptations--Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire from 1951 comes immediately to mind--played it straight and didn't try anything fancy. Here Parker seems obsessed with "dressing up" the play. What he does is obscure it.

On the positive side the costumes were beautiful and Anna Massy was an indelible Miss Prism. Reese Witherspoon at least looked the part of Cecily and she obviously worked hard. Rupert Evertt had some moments in the beginning that resembled Wilde's Algernon, but he was not able to sustain the impersonation.

My recommendation is that you not bother with this production and instead get the 1952 film starring, in addition to Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave and Margaret Rutherford. It is essentially true to the play as Wilde wrote it, and is a pure delight.

--Dennis Littrell, author of "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!"

54 of 68 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars The Importance of Being Accurate September 3, 2002

By A Customer

Format:DVD

Any film that boasts, "Based on a play by Oscar Wilde, additional dialogue by" anybody at all immediately goes on my suspicious list. What, a screenplay ready-made by one of the wittiest playwrights of all time isn't good enough? Especially when the "additions" add unnecessary plot twists (Algie getting arrested? Lady Bracknell as a chorine? Hello?!) and, worst of all, change the ending. Rupert Everett exchanges his ebullient and suave persona, so admirably displayed in "An Ideal Husband," for a faded, dissolute air which he suddenly replaces with, yes, earnestness for the final scene. Dame Judi Dench, normally a comic delight, tanks all too many lines by stating them with enraged self-importance. Reese Witherspoon is lightweight--not entirely her fault, since the director cuts her lines and replaces them with bizarre dream sequences--and Frances O'Connor is simply unpleasant. Both women's roles were originally written as supremely practical EXCEPT for their strange fascination for a certain name; this movie makes that fixation the most sane thing about them. I am giving this movie one star solely for the presence of Colin Firth, whose modulated and occasionally exultant performance is as near to right-on as this movie will allow. Too bad he didn't get to deliver his penultimate line as Wilde intended; he would have done it well. Skip this film. Watch the witty and elegant Michael Redgrave version instead.