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Undescribable Perfection

Memorable, crazy movie

As Good As It Gets

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's 1929. Larita (Jessica Biel) is a celebrated American race car driver. Major Jim Whittaker (Colin Firth) is the head of a large British estate haunted by the war. His wife Veronica (Kristin Scott Thomas) manages the estate's slow decline. To her dismay, her favorite John (Ben Barnes) returns married to the brash American divorcée Larita. Larita plans to live their own lives but Veronica has plans for her son to continue the estate. They are joined by John's former girlfriend neighbor Sarah Hurst and her brother Philip. Sister Hilda has a crush on Philip. The stay becomes a battle with a dead dog and some public flashing.Based on Noël Coward's work, this tries to have a breezy comedic feel. There is some fun to be had but it's not much more than that. Biel fits the modern liberated American woman. Kristin Scott Thomas is a great foil. Firth is safe. However, the movie doesn't excite. The sharpness is fleeting. Like the estate, the movie seems to fade away.

I have to say that my only exposure to Sir Noel Coward's work was seeing the London production of "Hay Fever" with Dame Judi Dench and an all star cast in it's final performance. This film is based on a play by Coward. He enjoys mocking the hypocrisies of the upper class and aristocracy. In this film version, a wild American widow Larita marries into an uptight old British family. Colin Firth and Dame Kristen Scott Thomas plays the in-laws. Jessica Biel plays Larita. The film has some comedic and dramatic moments. Her in-laws are bewildered and amused by her. The film is done on location. The cast are first rate. The storyline especially Coward's plays are dated by today's standards.

No film involving Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas and Noel Coward can be all bad. Easy Virtue comes a good deal closer than it should. Coward's sparkling wit barely manages to overcome the laborious adaptation of Stephan Elliott and Sheridian Jobbins, with Elliott's cumbersome direction not helping any. Firth and Thomas are marvelous and a decent chunk of the cast follows their example as well as they can. Jessica Biel, however, is not just terribly miscast but displays the limits of her ability with an often mannered and occasionally brittle performance. The first hour of the movie is more or less enjoyably carried along by an emphasis on Coward's humor. The last half hour turns dour and lifeless. Throw in a soundtrack that is constantly annoying in its doubly anachronistic fashion and you've got a motion picture that can't manage to do more than break even.John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) is a young Englishman abroad who meets an unconventional America race car driver named Larita (Jessica Biel), marries her and the two of them return to John's family estate. His controlling, resolute mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) only wants to be rid of Larita. John's WWI veteran father (Colin Firth) is roused from his "Lost Generation" ennui by the arrival of his new daughter-in-law. John's two sisters (Kimberly Nixon and Katherine Parkinson) vacillate between being intrigued and appalled by the new arrival. John's hasty union with Larita has spoiled long-anticipated dreams of his marrying the "girl from the country estate next door" (Charlotte Riley) and Larita's desire for a city life and gainful employment are contrary to John's gentry upbringing and his mother's plans for John to take over control of the family fortune, which has fallen on hard times. A secret from Larita's past may give John's mother everything she wants, but is that what John wants?I'm not the one to compare this production with Coward's original play or the 1928 silent movie version. All I can do is evaluate 2008's Easy Virtue on its own merits. As previously mentioned, it has some but they are nearly equaled by its flaws. I don't think these filmmakers every realized that in their approach, the most sympathetic figure in the story is John's mother. She's a woman under tremendous stress from trying to hold her family together single handed, only to find the future of her home and her son imperiled by a strange interloper. As the two women struggle over the feckless John, it's hard not to root for the mother no matter what the film throws at you. And while Ben Barnes and the other performers look almost as at ease inhabiting their characters as Firth and Thomas, Biel appears very "actorly" for the vast majority of time she's on screen. She's not speaking. She's reading lines. And Biel is also far too young and fresh-looking for her role as its sculpted by Jobbins and Elliott.Easy Virtue is an easy mark for a critic. You could gush over Coward's words the work most of the actors or you could pick apart the pacing and tone and Biel's inappropriate presence. I'll say it's a movie you probably won't love but you probably won't hate it, either. Your affection for Noel Coward should probably decide whether to watch it or not.

Easy Virtue was a bit dull than i expected it to be,i mean most of the British comedies that i have seen are better than this.An American living amongst core English family is an idea which can be made pretty damn funny but Easy Virtue falls short of that fun & focuses more on the messy stuff of relations and responsibilities etc etc.Hilarity is a bit fitful for the most part..its about a young Englishman who marries an American woman and brings her to his native home to his English family,now expectingly this turns out to be slight incredulous for his family & esp his mother which makes the American incongruous, how she tries to make up is the main agenda covered by the film.The story has a lot of potential but overall the film fails to maintain the standards,so the only description which fits....its an average British comedy with bits and pieces of humor!!!