Metacritic reviews

Hall has taken away the brittle wit of Coward’s source material and replaced it with little other than some fun performances in search of a better movie.

This Blithe Spirit dilutes the original’s heady cocktail, serving up a sugary punch rather than a dry martini.

The impish Leslie Mann is well cast as his dead wife, Elvira, who provides a jolt of creative inspiration. Judi Dench’s screechy caricature of psychic Madame Arcati is less winning.

Any trenchant observations to be found in this Blithe Spirit only pop and fizz into thin air like Champagne bubbles. Though effervescent, it’s a bit too ethereal for its own good.

Coward’s brand of urbane casual elitism is rather past its sell-by date. But the problems run deeper in this energetic but scattershot version of a property which might have been best left to rest in peace.

Completely miscast with uninspired production, this remodeling of Blithe Spirit is a faint shadow of its Coward roots, a resurrected retired poltergeist without its same purpose or vigor.

Surplus buffoonery and a new ending add nothing to the original, leaving us with a movie that obsesses over death while showing all too few signs of life.

The irresistible comic elegance of the premise – a remarried widower is tormented by the ghost of his first wife – is lost in a mass of pointless embellishments and tinkerings.

Despite the heavyweight cast, the film’s production values are those of a kids’ TV show that might go out on a weekday afternoon.

A tin-eared, lumpen-footed, almost perversely unfunny new spin on Noël Coward’s breezy 1940s farce.