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 tinseltown: stephen fry
This week, Hollywood catches up. Why can't Stephen Fry sustain a whole movie? His overly wordy 1997 Oscar Wilde biopic read well as a script but was completely flat onscreen. Even a young Jude Law playing Fry's petulant love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name was, yes, unspeakable. Now the comedian has come up with an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, moving it to pre- and post-WWII but keeping Waugh's general tone of criticism against frivolous, champagne-swilling high society. But Fry and frequent partner Hugh Laurie managed a far more subtle – and amusing - damning with their ITV series Jeeves & Wooster, which essentially took on the same period and the same people.The problem with Bright Young Things (finally about to be released in the US) is that, as a director and adapter, Fry is so thoroughly seduced by the posh and sparkly. He revels in the eccentricities of the moneyed classes - their glamorous ennui, their endless parties, their pretty dresses - so much that when the time comes to expose their shallowness, the effort feels both rushed and reluctant. I think Emily Mortimer's portrayal of party girl Nina Blount is supposed to read as farce, but it somehow failed to go far enough, while Stephen Campbell Moore - who looks exactly like a cross between Laurie and Law - pretty much phoned in his performance as a hard-up aristo-turned-gossip-columnist. Altogether, an unsettling combination of comedy set pieces and moralistic plot that feels like the worst, rather than the best, of Jeeves.
Jade Chang
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