Stephen Fry's directorial debut is a second-rate attempt at updating Evelyn Waugh's novel. To make the film more 'accessible' Fry pretends to be Baz Luhrmann - and fails. Bright Young Things has possibly the noisiest and most unrelenting soundtrack of the year, with so much cutting between shots that I began to feel that I had whiplash. This is an exercise style over content, but the style really isn't much to write home about.
Bright Young Things is one of those wretched literary adaptations where the writer/director is desperate to say "oh, it might be a period piece, but how little things have changed". And Fry takes every opportunity to underline this point. Over and over and over again. Watching Sir John Mills's character snorting coke (actually it wasn't really a character, more of a cypher or stereotype like virtually all the other roles here) was one of the more embarrassing screen moments of 2003.
The film has no sense of narrative drive or pace. It's difficult to either follow or care. Unfortunately newcomer Stephen Campbell Moore who is as close as the film gets to a main protagonist is a dull, uncharismatic actor. Michael Sheen overacts and looks embarrassed in a ridiculous role. However there are star turns from Fenella Woolgar and James McAvoy who manage to rivet even when everything else is flailing around them.
Fatally, the film has absolutely no sense of period whatsoever and seems littered with borrowings from across the 20th century. Waugh's novel was about the Jazz Age of the 1920s. Fry's world is a kind of incorrectly jazzy 30s, with added 21st century haircuts. The final scenes set during the Second World War seem lame and are, of course, simply wrong - the novel was written in 1930.
The film is ill-conceived and poorly executed. I had always assumed that Stephen Fry would be the right man to adapt Waugh, but here he proves that he doesn't have the least idea what makes good cinema, let alone a convincing adaptation.
Bright Young Things is one of those wretched literary adaptations where the writer/director is desperate to say "oh, it might be a period piece, but how little things have changed". And Fry takes every opportunity to underline this point. Over and over and over again. Watching Sir John Mills's character snorting coke (actually it wasn't really a character, more of a cypher or stereotype like virtually all the other roles here) was one of the more embarrassing screen moments of 2003.
The film has no sense of narrative drive or pace. It's difficult to either follow or care. Unfortunately newcomer Stephen Campbell Moore who is as close as the film gets to a main protagonist is a dull, uncharismatic actor. Michael Sheen overacts and looks embarrassed in a ridiculous role. However there are star turns from Fenella Woolgar and James McAvoy who manage to rivet even when everything else is flailing around them.
Fatally, the film has absolutely no sense of period whatsoever and seems littered with borrowings from across the 20th century. Waugh's novel was about the Jazz Age of the 1920s. Fry's world is a kind of incorrectly jazzy 30s, with added 21st century haircuts. The final scenes set during the Second World War seem lame and are, of course, simply wrong - the novel was written in 1930.
The film is ill-conceived and poorly executed. I had always assumed that Stephen Fry would be the right man to adapt Waugh, but here he proves that he doesn't have the least idea what makes good cinema, let alone a convincing adaptation.