Gente con clase

This is based on a Noel Coward play, so you should know what to expect.

It is very nicely done - the locations look great (Isle of Man standing in for Kent), the cars and clothes are fabulous, and the casting is excellent. Stephen Fry plays a butler (again) with some Jeevesian touches, but is pretty low-key. Colin Firth plays against type in the role Coward so obviously designed for himself - and is funny (again, not something one expects from Firth). Jeanne Tripplehorn looks suitably glamorous as the Hollywood star, and Baldwin This does make a few digs at class and snobbery, but it is really a bit of fluffy comedy to pass a pleasant hour.

What can I say?

I loved this movie. It is a classic comedy of manners. Written by bitch extrodinaire Noel Coward, the movie sparkles with wit and one-liners. Colin Firth plays the resident bitch (very much a Noel Coward type characture). Julie Andrews is in fine form as the matriarch fearing her son is going to marry beneath the family by marrying Hollywood starlet Jeeane Tripplehorn, who looks gorgeous in this film.

Mad servants and stuck-up butlers abound, this movie is a real find.

And final praise must go to the person who steals this movie from under the very esteemed company, and that is Sophie Thompson as ladies maid Moxie. The dinner scenes where she is getting drunker, and drunker is the funniest parts of a very funny movie.

To be recommended.

For anyone who enjoys British class distinctions and the upstairs-downstairs culture of life among the manor born, this stylish tale of a Hollywood actress who is preparing to marry into a quirky aristocratic family is sumptuously designed and a great deal of fun. Julie Andrews shines, as does Jeanne Triplehorn and Stephen Fry as the butler who is impeccably correct amid the chaos which ensues when things inevitably begin to go awry. It is a farce that absolutely works. The 1950s era is captured with elegant attention to detail and the characters, for all their foibles, are likable and thoroughly engaging. Great entertainment for anyone who is lucky enough to happen upon it!

This probably isn't one of Noël Coward's better plays for me, but Eric Styles has managed to assemble a solid cast to make this adaptation just about watchable. Edward Atterton (Lord Marshwood) has fallen for Hollywood star "Miranda" (Jeanne Tripplehorn) who is, in turn, on the rebound from a relationship with her on-screen partner "Lucas" (William Baldwin). After their whirlwind romance on the Côte d'Azur they plan to return to his stately pile where his dowager countess mother "Felicity" (Dame Julie Andrews) is waiting to greet them. Now this woman is rather shrewd and egged on by her mischievous nephew "Peter" (Colin Firth) decides to let matters take their course... That plan is rather spiked by a surprise announcement from her long-term confidante "Moxie" (Sophie Thompson) that, coupled with the pursuing "Lucas", creates the template for quite an engaging, if one-dimensional, theatrical farce. Nobody is really challenged here, the plot delivers competent efforts from both cast and screenplay along lines that don't really provide much humour or originality, and that concludes very much as you might expect. It's well photographed (though not very well edited) and Dame Julie brings that certain star quality that we seldom see nowadays. I would probably have left this to the stage where i expect it would have worked better - on the silver screen it falls a bit flat.

This was a pretty darn good movie, and I always enjoy seeing Julie Andrews do comedy. But for me, the highlight of the movie was the dinner scene, with "Moxy" (Sophie Thompson) furiously biting her tongue while her clueless real-life sister (Jeanne Trippelhorn) concocts falsely slanderous stories about their mother, painting her as a bawdy alcoholic. Moxy's outraged cry of "Jugs of Beer!?" after Miranda/Freda leaves is priceless, as is her dressing down of Freda near the end of the film.

I liked this film, too, because it didn't sink too far into the "Silly Ass/Bright Young Thing" mode that most of Coward's works tend to. Rent it if you can. It's worth catching.