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Good movie but grossly overrated

Best movie ever!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This film, based on a Noel Coward play, stars Julie Andrews, as Lady Felicity Marshwood, who is upset to learn that her son, Lord Nigel (Edward Atterton) is engaged to be married to Hollywood film star Miranda Frayle (Jeanne Tripplehorn). However, the situation soon becomes even more complicated when Nigel plans to bring Miranda to meet his aristocratic family, only for the family's maid Moxie (Sophie Thompson), to announce that Miranda is in fact her sister! Throw in Miranda's co-star and former lover Don Lucas (William Baldwin) who is coming to England to try and stop the marriage, and Colin Firth and Stephen Fry as respectively Nigel's cousin Peter, and the family butler Crestwell, and the stage is set for a fine comedy!I loved this film – it did remind me somewhat of another Noel Coward adaptation – Easy Virtue, which like Relative Values, also starred Colin Firth, and which also featured the son of an upper-crust English family bringing his vivacious American girlfriend to meet his relatives, but the films play out quite differently (I loved easy Virtue too).All the cast were excellent – in particular, Thompson, Andrews and Firth. Stephen Fry was playing a role which could have been written for him, and although he is one of the supporting rather than main cast members, he certainly makes the most of his screen time. Baldwin is also very funny as the often drunk Lucas, who throws a spanner in the works of Miranda's plan to transform herself from a starlet to a Lady of the Manor. And Moxie, who is transformed from a maid, into a wealthy family friend (so that Miranda won't recognise her) is the centre of one of the funniest scenes, when Moxie gets drunk to try and overcome her fear at meeting her sister who she hasn't seen for some 20 years. Colin Firth is just adorable as Peter – it could have been a nothing role in the wrong actor's hands, but Firth is perfect.The plot itself is rather daft – why didn't they just tell Miranda that her sister was working for the family, rather than try and cover up the fact (and surely Miranda would have recognised her own sister!), but I think that it's just something that you need to go with, accept, and enjoy. Overall, this was a very funny and hugely delightful film. At just under one and a half hours, it never gets boring, the cast is top-notch, and I would certainly recommend it.

Relative Values was never given a Broadway production during the lifetime of Noel Coward. It only made it there in 1986 thirteen years after Noel died. But in the original British production the star was the formidable Gladys Cooper. She's in the role of Duchess of Marchwood so Julie Andrews had some big shoes to fill.I'll have to say that Andrews did it good style and a British production of even a second line Noel Coward work is better than a lot that is around. What I found interesting that with his various trips across the pond Coward felt comfortable enough to put some American characters in his work.Andrews is the mother of Edward Atterton who is a well known jet setting playboy who always comes home to mother especially when things go spectacularly bad or good. Depending on your point of view he arrives home with American movie star Jeanne Tripplehorn in tow who is on the rebound from a breakup. They're going to be married, a fact that does not please mother.Neither does it please William Baldwin who is an action film star of the era, late Forties when the play was written. He's who Tripplehorn is on the rebound from and he wants her back. He knows full well that Tripplehorn would be bored to tears as the lady of the manor in training in the quiet English countryside.Add to all of that Sophia Thompson is personal maid to Andrews and she's Tripplehorn's long lost sister. It all comes to a head when Tripplehorn starts spouting off the invented studio biography where Thompson who has a fake status of her own for the occasion just explodes and these two have a cat fight to beat all.Observing all this are butler Stephen Fry and cousin Colin Firth who seems to be a permanent house guest. They get the lion's share of the Coward wit in the dialog. This is Coward who was the pet of the English society. But Coward's third voice in the film is that of Thompson. Coward came from some pretty humble background and she also might very well be modeled on Coward's good friend from adolescence Gertrude Lawrence who also came from most modest means.Relative Values was a pleasure to see because other than his really acclaimed work like Blithe Spirit or Private Lives, too little of Coward is played today. We could certainly use some of his wit now. I often wonder what Coward would have made of some of the events of the last forty years.

I've always believed that every movie is allowed One Big Coincidence, and the bigger it is, the earlier in the picture it should be sprung. This is known (don't ask me why) as the "Of all the gin joints in all the world" rule. This example of lesser Coward has a HUGE coincidence which if the above rule were followed would have to have been sprung on the audience at least a week before the movie began. The irony is, the coincidence isn't even particularly germane to the main story and the movie could've gotten along without it. And should've. Said main story involves the clash of solid traditional veddy-upper-clahss English values with more casual boorish Yankee lack-of-values, brought about when the Lord of Marshwood (named Nigel and well named) brings his American bride-to-be, a big movie star, home to meet his mum, a proper but likable paragon of British nobility (Julie Andrews of course). The HUGE coincidence manifests when Lady Marshwood's maid and boon companion confesses that the big American movie star is her sister whom she hasn't seen in 20 years! The story never really recovers from this astonishment because nothing more is made of this beyond some awkward comedy (the movie star doesn't recognize her sister) and once the maid reveals her true identity to the star, the whole thing is shuffled aside and the movie becomes another of the kind of class comedy the Brits love so much. You get the feeling Coward threw it in just to liven things up because he couldn't think of anything else--it comes from deep in left field (or over the wider field boundary, this being England) and pretty much stays there. The sisterly relationship is never resolved (the star makes a totally unbelievable former Brit) and once everyone's had a night's sleep cooler heads prevail and the engagement hassle comes to its foreordained conclusion. Fortunately there are xlnt performances to help us through this, particularly Colin Firth as the Coward stand-in (dry wry and quite a guy) and Stephen Fry as the very model of a modern English butler, dealing out wisdom and consolation as needed. And Julie is magnificent--impossible to believe she was 65 when she made this, especially in the green off-the-shoulder leather evening gown she wears in the opening sequence. You'd never have caught Mary Poppins or Maria von Trapp in something like that.

I enjoyed this film very much. Lovely cast (the British actors are marvellous, the Americans less so), great costumes (charming 50s flair), good plot. Reminded me a bit of Oscar Wilde... I just loved Colin Firth as Peter Ingleton - he plays the obnoxious nephew in residence just so well. I love his performance - he's funny, charming and delightful. Light and fluffy - quite an entertaining little comedy for a Sunday afternoon. Be warned: It's very British!