Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Konterr Brilliant and touching

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

SnoopyStyle In 1882, famed writer Oscar Wilde (Stephen Fry) visits America. He returns to England to marry Constance Lloyd (Jennifer Ehle) to the approval of his mother (Vanessa Redgrave). He begins a sexual affair with his friend Robbie Ross (Michael Sheen) and has a family with Constance. Then he falls for the dashing, self-indulgent Lord Alfred Douglas (Jude Law).Bosie is dislikable. In short, he's a rich annoying brat. The only person less likable is his father. It makes the relationship unappealing. The movie could have portrayed it as a destructive obsession. That would be more epic. The movie needs to foreshadow the dire consequences by presenting a darker attitude of the day. His homosexuality is mostly a secret but those who know seems to tolerate it. It is missing the dangerous edge until the arrival of the father halfway into it. Overall, it is elevated by the performance of Fry but it needs more danger in the first half. Fry's calm demeanor doesn't project danger. His relationship isn't appealing. It could have been more intensity but Fry is good.

The_late_Buddy_Ryan We yield to no one in our appreciation of Stephen Fry (except maybe for that woman who sings the song on YouTube about having his baby), but this tastefully appointed biopic was a bit of a letdown. Fry as Wilde sails serenely through the opening scenes, wowing a crowd of shirtless miners in Colorado, wedding a beautiful young admirer, then, suddenly squeamish after the birth of their second child, allowing himself to be seduced by another young, male admirer (Michael Sheen, the guy who always plays Tony Blair), trading up to Ioan Gruffud, then to JLaw himself, as Bosie. Fry and Law may have seemed like strong, perhaps inevitable, casting choices, but neither one brings much intensity to his role, and their relationship seems oddly uninvolving—more like tea with a favorite uncle than "feasting with panthers," in Wilde's famous phrase. A few sparks fly when Tom Wilkinson looms up, in a fine nutball turn, as Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensbury, but the pace slackens again in the crucial courtroom scenes, and we had to resort to Wikipedia to find out why the MoQ thought that Bosie's brother Frank was getting "buggered by that Jew Rosebery" and what Frank's (alleged) suicide had to do with Wilde's disastrous decision to prosecute the marquess for libel. Jennifer Ehle, as the almost-all-forgiving Constance Wilde, Vanessa Redgrave and Zoë Wanamaker don't have much to do besides show up for their costume fittings; Orlando Bloom, who gets one brief scene as a cheeky hustler, looks great in a bowler hat, though I pity the LotR fans who got the DVD from Netflix because they saw his name in the cast list.

ursulahemard A very tender portrayal of Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) by Stephen Fry; Stephen literally seems to be Oscars reincarnation and Jude Law as Bosie is just perfect casting.Great chemistry between the two. Concentrating rather on the 'drama',and mainly on the incriminating homosexuality in the playwrights life, of which one ought to be familiarised a little before watching. Some mild but explicit fornication scenes weren't necessary and could have been omitted in my opinion (as well as a couple of scenes with the hysterical father of Bosie) and replaced these with more instructive clips in reference to Oscars plays and poetry. We were being taking through 'The Selfish Giant', as well as some of his most famous epigrams (slipped into conversations), however I was missing a few more literary references. But all in all, a fine film, brilliant acting and biographically and historically accurate, although somewhat shortened.

bkoganbing Two very fine films about Oscar Wilde came out roughly at the same time during the sixties and they starred Peter Finch and Robert Morley respectively as the great literary icon. But those were in the days before Stonewall and you couldn't be all that explicit. I'm not just talking about sex scenes though there are some here. As far as films were concerned homosexuality was the love that really dare not even breathe let alone speak its name.One reason I liked this film Wilde that starred Stephen Fry in the title role is that the others began with Wilde's involvement with Lord Alfred Douglas, played here by a sexy Jude Law. Here we get a bit of background and we discover that Wilde was a latent case for years because society dictated gay was an abomination. He married and fathered two sons whom he no doubt loved. Just some of the beautiful children's stories he did write attest to that.But as the film opens with Wilde in America and touring a mining camp and giving a lecture to miners below the earth's surface, you can see the look of love in his eyes as he beholds some of those hunky miners with their shirts off. Since you know who Wilde was and his story already, you're looking yourself for signs.Wilde was a latent case until he was seduced by Robbie Ross an actor in one of his plays portrayed by Michael Sheen. I can certainly attest to the fact that if gay is your orientation and you've been with women before, when you do it the first time, you KNOW it's right for you. Later on Ioan Gruffud who apparently is his inspiration for Dorian Gray actually falls in love with Wilde.But Wilde's like a kid in a candy store and when he meets the incredibly handsome Lord Alfred Douglas. Unlike the other two Wilde pictures I mentioned this version fleshes a bit more out of 'Bosy's' character and Jude Law may be pretty to look at, but he's a vain, shallow, selfish, and spoiled young aristocrat. Among other things Law introduces Fry to is the availability of rent boys on the street and at certain posh establishments frequented by closeted Victorians.But it all comes to an end when Bosy's dad played by Tom Wilkinson leaves a calling card accusing Wilde of being a sodomite. In the other two Wilde films, it's Oscar who just arrogantly think he can squash this thing in court with his fabled wit. Here it's Bosy who pushes Wilde into it.The other films concentrated on the trials, civil and criminal. In Wilde the emphasis is on Oscar's character and relationships. The women in Wilde's life are wife Jennifer Ehle and mother Vanessa Redgrave. In watching the two women how they interact it's like watching the families of Ennis and Jack from Brokeback Mountain and how they react to their husband's strange behavior.Also in the film very briefly is Orlando Bloom playing a rent boy. I'm surprised that the film received no Oscar nominations, no pun intended. Though it was honored in the United Kingdom.Some 40 years after Stonewall, the tragedy of Oscar Wilde not being true to his nature as he says he wished he had done from the beginning is still being played out in many areas, in many walks of life. Just look at the number of outings there have been of various political figures on the right and you know it is so.Wilde is a great film which speaks to this generation of GLBT people with current players to tell sadly an often repeated story.