Pluskylang Great Film overall

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

James Hitchcock "Bright Young Things" or "Bright Young People" was the name given to a set of hedonistic, fun-loving young aristocrats and bohemians in the London of the 1920s and 1930s and who featured prominently in the gossip columns of the day. When in 1930 Evelyn Waugh wrote a novel satirising the group he initially intended to call it "Bright Young Things", but rejected this because he felt it had become too much of a journalistic cliché. His eventual choice of title, however, "Vile Bodies", was not his happiest inspiration, so it is perhaps not surprising that writer-director Stephen Fry reverted to Waugh's original choice. The novel contains some brilliant satirical writing and social commentary, but its plot is rather unsatisfactory. It is also notably uneven in tone, starting off relatively light-hearted but becoming progressively bitterer and gloomier; Waugh himself attributed this unevenness to the fact that it was while writing the novel that his marriage to his first wife (also named Evelyn) collapsed. Waugh's story ends with the outbreak of a catastrophic European war; writing three years before Hitler's rise to power, he was remarkably prophetic in this respect. Fry rewrites Waugh's story somewhat, moving the action from the late twenties/early thirties to the late thirties; there are references to both Hitler and Wallis Simpson. The Prime Minister, however, is neither Baldwin nor Chamberlain but Waugh's fictitious James Brown. (In choosing this name he also proved unintentionally prophetic; Gordon Brown's full name was James Gordon Brown). The film ends during the actual, historical Second World War, not the hypothetical war of the novel. Fry is able to deal more explicitly with matters such as drug use and homosexuality, which in the moral climate of the early thirties Waugh could only hint at. The plot is really too complex to summarise in any detail, but it revolves around the efforts of an aspiring young novelist named Adam Fenwick-Symes to find enough money to court his fiancée Nina Blount. When the manuscript of Adam's latest novel, also titled "Bright Young Things", is confiscated by Dover customs officers for allegedly being pornographic, even though they have never read it, he is forced to take a job as a gossip columnist on a newspaper, a job which brings him into frequent contact with London's smart set. Other important characters include Simon Balcairn, Adam's predecessor as "Mr Chatterbox", Ginger Littlejohn, Adam's rival for Nina's affections, and the Canadian-born newspaper proprietor Lord Monomark. (Monomark, like Lord Copper in Waugh's later novel "Scoop", is a satirical portrait of Lord Beaverbrook). The film contains a large number of cameos by distinguished members of the British acting profession, among them John Mills in his last film before his death two years later. Among the notable contributions are those from Dan Aykroyd as the overbearing Monomark, Fenella Woolgar as the madcap socialite Agatha Runcible, Michael Sheen as the screamingly camp Miles Malpractice, Peter O'Toole as Nina's mad old father Colonel Blount and Simon Callow as the exiled King of Anatolia, forever bewailing the theft of a valuable fountain-pen, something which seems to distress him far more than the loss of his kingdom. Fry keeps some of the serious incidents from the original novel; one character, for example, commits suicide and another ends up in a lunatic asylum, but he gives his film a much happier ending. This may prove controversial with purists, but in my view it was the right thing to do. Waugh's bleak ending served to underline his serious satirical purpose, but satire tends to lose its bite when directed against the mores and social institutions of several decades ago rather than against those of one's own day. "Bright Young Things" is less a social satire than a comedy-drama with a period setting, and, with some witty dialogue, amusing incidents and well-drawn characters it works very well as such. 7/10

greenf74 I began to fear that this film would be a travesty of Waugh's superb novel when I saw Stephen Fry doing promotional interviews for it in which he claimed that the reason Waugh's title had been changed was because Waugh had actually wanted to call the book "Bright Young Things" but had been dissuaded by his publisher. Balderdash, of course. Obviously, some ill-read fellow in the film business had expressed the view that the title "Vile Bodies" suggested a horror film - perhaps about a depraved coroner? - rather than a sharp satirical comedy. Still, this annoyingly foolish pretence didn't quite prepare me to expect a film quite as awful as this one actually is. Fry seems to have no understanding of Waugh's novel at all, and even transposes it from the 1920s - the actual era of the "bright young things" - to the 1930s, when the absurdities of the rich, in an era of worldwide economic depression, were considerably less tolerated. The entirely fictitious and unspecified war which breaks out at the end of the book becomes World War II - even though Waugh's novel predates that conflict by nine years! Could it be that Fry didn't actually know this? The relentless cheapening of Waugh's fine satire is made worse by the employment of a large number of the best actors in Britain (not to mention Dan Aykroyd and Stockard Channing from America), most of whom are wasted - none more so than John Mills, in his last movie - and many of whom are encouraged by tyro director Fry to over-act irritatingly. Only Fenella Woolgar and David Tennant seem to have actually read the novel, or anything else by Waugh. The novel is, after more than eighty years, still as sharp as a razor; this film seems as shallow, empty and stupid as its characters.

joannaclaireice When i first saw Bright Young Things it was because my elder sister Florence had made we watch it when she was in charge of the remote control. i wasn't really paying any attention until Adam was left by his fiancé-to-be Nina. I think that David's appearance in this film was absolutely great as that was the first time that i'd ever seen him with ginger hair and a moustache. My favourite character was Agatha (played by Fenella Woolgar) and especially after she went mad. I didn't quite understand what happened to her until the film literally pushed my to books etc... to buy the book. The most devastating part of the film must have been when Miles (Michael Sheen) reveals that he is gay. The funniest character was definitely the drunken major as he never had the time (or the place) to give Adam his money. Jim Broadbent brought a great light to the film seeing as i was a bit disappointed and felt like crying a) when Adam lost his fiancé-to-be Nina and b)when the man at the train station refused to give Adam his story book named 'Bright Young Things'

B24 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.