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Movie
Review:
Bright Young Things
By William Sternman
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Bright
Young Things
Starring Stephen Cambell Moore, Emily Mortimer, Stockard Channing, Dan
Aykroyd
Written and Directed by Stephen Fry
Based on the novel Vile Bodies, By Evelyn Waugh
What
a flip-flopper!
Usually you can hear me ranting and raving like a cinematic fundamentalist about plot-driven movies that offer just enough in the way of characterization to move the story to the next panel. A good example is Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002). The set designs are spectacular and the complex fight scenes are as artfully choreographed as a ballet, but where in this world are the human beings? (Although I do have to give Bill the Butcher his due; Daniel Day-Lewis delivers such a lip-smackingly flavorful performance that you almost let yourself be conned into believing that he is a real person.)
Two more examples from 2002: Catch Me If You Can and Chicago. The former is also all plot, no characterization, while the latter rarely interrupts its interminable musical numbers long enough for anything as mundane as either plot or characterization. (Speaking of the latter, much as I love Renée Zellweger—and I do love her, I really do—she can’t hold a flickering candle to Ginger Rogers in Roxie Hart, 1942.)
And now, at long last, we come to Bright Young Things. Does it have plot? Only what’s needed to get the cast from one freaky party to the next. Does it have real characters? Not that I noticed. Did I grumble through every minute of it? Don’t you believe that canard for a second. I loved it; I really did.
Why the sudden change of heart? No, it's not deathbed remorse. It’s just that these caricatures posing as people are so innocent, so clueless, so guileless, so self-centered, so transparent that, like a kitten or a puppy, you just can’t help being amused by everything they do.
Take the nominal hero, Adam Symes (Stephen Campbell Moore). Coming back from Paris, he is a budding author who is stopped by a customs officer (Jim Carter) who confiscates his manuscript (Do I really have to tell you the title?). His official rationale: “If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.” Too many nuances, I daresay. Even worse, Adam is assumed to be queer because the name of the author on the manuscript cover is Sue de Nim. It’s a pun, a play on words, you knucklehead; but try explaining that to a bureaucrat.
Without his manuscript, Adam forfeits his £1000 advance from publishing tycoon Lord Monomark (Dan Aykroyd). Of course, that means he can’t marry Nina (Emily Mortimer) after all. Nina does love him, but she also has a certain fondness for money. Besides, making love hurts. “All this fuss about sleeping together,” she declares. “For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.” It’s all terribly droll, don’t you know?
Adam spends the rest of the movie getting and then losing the £1000—and, of course, Nina (Her name is an excuse for playing Noël Coward’s delicious recording of his song of the same name. There are two other Coward ditties on the soundtrack).
Along the way, he meets more eccentrics than Alice or Mr. Pickwick ever dreamed of—a deposed King of Anatolia (Simon Callow), still in mourning for his lost fountain pen; Ginger Littlejohn (David Tennant), to whom Adam sells his interest in Nina for a pittance; Mrs. Melrose Ape (Stockard Channing), an Aimee Semple McPherson-like American evangelist who picks the wrong choir to preach to; Lottie Crump (Julia McKenzie), the scatterbrained owner of a rundown hotel; Nina’s dotty father (Peter O'Toole), who gives Adam a cheque for £1000 but signs it “Charlie Chaplin,” and so on. We even get a glimpse (two glimpses, actually) of Sir John Mills sniffing coke.
One of the reasons that this movie is so godawfully enjoyable is that it’s adapted from Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 satire of pre-World War II British high-society high jinks, Vile Bodies. Stephen Fry, who has written quite a few British TV series, wrote the script (his first for pictures). Although you may not recognize his name as a director (this is his first movie), you may remember him as Inspector Thompson in Gosford Park (2001), Bishop Flavius Melchett/Melchett/General Melchecus/Wellington in Blackadder Back & Forth (1999) and the narrator of two Harry Potter flicks.
Jolly good fun, old bean.
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William Sternman's short stories have been published in England, Hungary, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the U.S. His book and movie reviews have appeared in Audience, Films in Review, Bestsellers, The Drummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and www.movie-vault.com. He has been a volunteer tutor at the Center for Literacy since 1998. He received a fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
© 2004 Me Three