Bright Young Things

A most notable characteristic of this film is that it rather zanily merges the 1920's with the 1930's. That historical distortion may seem a slight defect to some viewers choosing to concentrate on a broader stage involving the upper class in its last throes of excess, but for me it destroys the underlying plot. The years before the Great Depression -- the Roaring 20's -- were sui generis. Moving everything forward to events as late as 1940 is a forced element that simply fails.

Otherwise, there are some bright young moments here. Character actors do indeed steal the show, even if some are given throw-away roles. If only there were better and more believable development of various interactions between the leads, it would make for compelling drama; but we are treated instead to campy olio resolving itself into a strange conclusion, somewhat surreal. For example, the business between Adam and Ginger having to do with money as WWII rages on is misplaced farce -- even if the audience assumes a generous disposition of credulity.

Little wonder outsiders looking in have a difficult time with this film, not to mention us history buffs.

Actor Stephen Fry makes an impressive splash as a director with Bright Young Things, based on the Evelyn Waugh novel, Vile Bodies. The story centers on some struggling "bright young things" during the years before England entered World War II. Adam (Stephen Campbell Moore) and Nina (Emily Mortimer) play sometime-engaged young things at the center of a disparate group of eccentrics. They seem addicted to the London "social whirl" as well as cocaine. He's a struggling writer, and she needs a rich husband. He gets roped into taking a job as a gossip columnist because the former writer (James McAvoy) commits suicide and because his manuscript is confiscated when he enters Scotland. So the young things go to every party and write up tons of scandalous gossip for the rag, keep getting drunk and stoned, and keep pursuing money. Typical acid commentary from Waugh, and Fry does a good job balancing all the characters and sub-plots. Impressive cast as well with Peter O'Toole (very funny), Dan Aykroyd, Stockard Channing (hilariously named Mrs. Melrose Ape), Harriet Walter, Imelda Staunton, Simon Callow, Jim Broadbent, Julia McKemzie, John Mills, Jim Carter, Angela Thorne, Bill Paterson, Richard E. Grant, and Margaret Tyzack recognizable. Fry appears as a chauffeur.

Moore and Mortimer are solid as young things, but Fenella Woolgar as Agatha is the standout. She's awesome in the part of the drugged out socialite who ends up in an asylum. Woolgar has several memorable scenes and droops about being "smashingly bored." Her race car scene is a scream. David Tennant is the repulsive Ginger, Michael Sheen is the queeny Miles, Lisa Dillon is the social wannabe, and Alec Newman is the very odd race driver.

Only real complaint is that the ending is VERY long and drawn out. And even though a few loose ends are tied up, it seems padded and interminable. We didn't really need to see WW II battle scenes, and even if the ending worked in the novel it seems very phony in the film.

I was one of the voices of the angels in this film. It is interesting and light hearted. I must say that it presents an interesting view on high society in England that I would guess rings true even now after having lived in the country for multiple years. The characters are considerably well developed and one does feel a connection to at least one character as they view the film. The story is an entertaining one to those of us that are interested in life throughout the nineteen twenties and thirties. It gives a very intimate view of life changes in the younger crowd of that era in the twentieth century. Good to watch, oh, and if you ever meet Mr. Fry...he is an interesting character...

"Bright Young Things" is a mostly effective satire, with some jarring seriousness thrown in, of "Masterpiece Theater" Jazz Age costume dramas for its first seven-eighths.

Set in the same period as "Gosford Park," its conflicts are just within the sexual and financial eccentricities of the empty-headed leisure and wannabe leisure class, where titles don't match income or outflow.

It is more of a visual evocation of Noel Coward songs and incorporates some of his numbers, as well as original sound-alike songs. The frolics have some similarities to the simultaneous Weimar Republic portrayed in "Cabaret."

Stephen Campbell Moore as the protagonist is almost too good in his film debut, as his character's captivatingly serious eyes and demeanor conflict with his insouciant company, particularly Emily Mortimer as his dispassionate lover, though that justifies the stuck-on denouement, that even without having read the Evelyn Waugh book this is adapted from, "Vile Bodies," I can tell didn't have this too neat and comeuppance tying-up.

The most pointed parts of the movie are its acid documentation of the birth of the tabloid gossip press, including Dan Ackroyd as a Canadian press baron with a more than passing resemblance to today's lords of Fleet Street. James McAvoy is very good as a more upper-class betraying precursor to his scandal-seeking scion reporter in the mini-series "State of Play," and manages to seem like a real person, unlike so many of the characters who are just types or plot conveniences.

The production design and costumes are delightful.

As one of the best assets humanity can boast to count among itself, Stephen Fry has delighted the world across a vast array of media, firmly establishing himself as one of my very favourite entertainers. How then, you ask, could it have taken me so unforgivably long to sample his Bright Young Things?

Having just penned the novel from which the film takes its name, Adam Symes is crestfallen to have it taken from him by customs as contraband literature. He returns to his life of yuppie indulgence (if indeed the film's '30s/'40s setting will permit the usage of that term) where he is variously delighted and disappointed by the tide-like fortunes of his financial situation, and the uncertainty concerning his ability to wed his beloved Nina.

Beginning with an expository reporter attempting to gain access to a lascivious and drug fuelled party, Bright Young Things launches us into the wild party lifestyle of its central cast of characters. The cocaine and absinthe combinations proclaimed by Nina as boring impress upon us the extent of the inter-war indulgence of the London youth. Things are somewhat slow to start, though the positively delightful and flowery banter of Fry's script keeps us both amused and entranced by the language of the era. Humour comes spouting from the supporting cast: the likes of Fenella Woolgar and Michael Sheen lend more laughs than the main acts themselves, who are generally left to present the dramatic front of the movie. Without doubt the film's best factor is the scene in which the hopeful Symes visits his father-in-law-to-be, a crackpot lunatic played splendidly by Peter O' Toole. As the running time finds itself elapsed, the drama begins to more firmly announce its presence to us, the stakes yet again raised and the outcome looking ever more bleak. The problem is that this never reaches a sufficient and acceptable zenith. No point of conclusion is reached wherein the characters seem to transform beyond the horrid snobs they began life before our eyes as, a shame given the potential this may have had. Not, that is to say, that the characters are unlikeable. In spite of their vices they grow upon us and become endeared to us, though we look on like disappointed parents, hopefully awaiting the time when they will learn the folly of their ways and grow up, a time the film never presents, or at least not expressly enough. I understand the novel on which the film is based takes this more desired route, the film's distance from this perhaps the product of Fry's wishes to carve his own story. In any case, despite the slight disappointment of the lack of redemption, the film is consistent in its humorous and dramatic elements, which blend together to give a decent slice of entertainment.

Almost certainly less good than it could and should have been, Bright Young Things feels like it fell at the last hurdle. That said, it was never at the front of the race. A perfectly competent debut from Mr Fry, one cannot disagree that the film holds its own.