Easy Virtue

As first woman race winner Larita Whitaker, husband of rich boy John Whitaker (Ben Barnes), Jessica Biel, not to mention the rest of the cast is terrible. The movie is also terrible. It is a slow, stupid, boring, terribly over-the-top period piece. Kristin Scott Thomas, a great actress plays Mrs. Whitaker, John's mom who hates Larita. The movie goes a step too far over the line when it starts to go into random things. Dancing, Singing, Yelling, ETC. Then we also get Colin Firth as the father of John who Larita is in love with. This movie never goes beyond horrible. It lies there on the ground hoping someone is stupid enough to actually like this. I am mad, I wasted two hours and $6.00 on this. I hope no one sees this movie. I was in an audience with one other guy, and I hope us two are the only ones who have seen this. Obviously this is not true, but I wish it was true. Why would they even make this movie? It's based on one of Noel Coward's worst plays. This is just terrible, unless you want to waste money, time, and patience, then skip it.

source: Easy Virtue

source: Easy Virtue

source: Easy Virtue

Never ever have i been so disappointed by going to the cinema's. We went to a sneak preview, the movie had only just began and already 5 people left with in 5 minutes. The irritating music makes you want to do kill yourself and the annoying voices and slang is just pain for the ears. I must say I've never walked out of the cinema's before the end, neither did the thought of it crossed my mind. Half of the people were as happy as me when the break came so everybody could walk out. Out of 50 people only 15 stayed and tortured them selfs more with this rubbish. Maybe when im 95 years old and demented than i might bare it thrue the whole thing.

I hated this movie so much. Normally I hate any sort of movie about the English gentry in the Thirties, and that includes "good" movies of this sort, like GOSFORD PARK, BEING JULIA, or COLD COMFORT FARM. But this movie is so bad that even those people who like this sort of thing will hate this sort of thing. And that's not a good thing! How can I explain the ugliness of this crude, cold, unfunny movie? Well, there's something really creepy about the way the director seems to keep jabbing at you with the musical score, and with the camera. Every time someone says something "witty" the camera flashes to a stuffed animal on the wall, or something, like that's supposed to be uproariously funny. Or there's a sudden noisy and glaring flare of jazz music, that has nothing to do with the plot. And it's like someone jabbing you in the arm, over and over, and saying, "isn't this simply too sophisticated, darling? Isn't it simply outrageous?" No, man, it's really not. Stop it. Jessica Biel . . . I'd never seen her before this movie. I gather she was once an American teen starlet of some sort. I think she would be really good in an MTV Reality Show, like "hot blonde sluts who don't have much talent." She makes Sharon Stone look like Meryl Streep. She's so bad that her character, who is meant to be winningly rebellious, a free spirit, or something of that sort, just comes across as coarse and disgusting. Yet at the same time you never, for one minute, believe that this woman was once a race car driver, or a married woman, or from Detroit, or whatever the hell she was supposed to be. It's pathetic. Colin Firth . . . I never liked him much, but in paper thin romantic roles in paper thin movies, like LOVE ACTUALLY, I guess he's tolerable. Here he's supposed to be a veteran of the Great War who spent ten years lying around in a French whorehouse smoking dope because of the Unspeakable Things he saw in the Great War. The best actor in the world couldn't make this kind of cliché seem meaningful. But boy, Colin Firth can't even convince you he's seen a rifle, let alone fired one. It's really, really sad and pathetic. Oh, one final note -- all the "cool" people in this movie smoke cigarettes. A lot. It's really creepy, and it's almost like the film makers are being paid off by big tobacco. It's true to the period to have them smoke, yes, but the direction is so crude it's plain there's some kind of payoff going on. The whole thing would be funny if it weren't so completely tedious and disgusting. I did not like this film. Not the writing, the acting, the soundtrack, or anything else. It was a bad, bad movie.

Brilliant, sparkling, joyful and sad, passionate and exciting, sweet and sour, elegant, refined and superbly ungraceful at the same time: contrasting adjectives are very fit for this captivating movie, which really hits the mark in a superb way. No flaw is to be found: the construction is solid and yet dynamic, highly-range acting is offered by the whole cast (but let me define Kristin Scott Thomas as sublime). The director creates a really enjoyable product, capable as it is of gaining the favour of the audience and to satisfy the viewer, both from an aesthetic and emotional point of view. The sound and authentic British humour stirring from the beginning to the end, makes one laugh but also think about the necessity to overcome a stuffy traditionalist attitude which make look back to a fossilized but no longer valid past,in order to let the new enter the scene, with all its dramatic potential of change. All certainties are questioned and prove to be dramatically frail. The conflict between the traditional English sobriety and self-control and the non-conformist American way of life gives rise to funny but also thoughtful moments of tension, subtly underlined by witty dialogues and emotionally engaging musical and dancing exchanges. A movie to be seen, heard, and enjoyed in every single part.

Fans of the Noel Coward play should be warned that this adaptation is only very, very loosely based on the source text. The director has used anachronistic music and rather crude sight gags, presumably to enliven Coward's 1920s play. In fairness, I have to say that everyone in the screening I attended had a great time - laughing loudly. But I found the film didn't trust enough in Coward. The director went for cheap laughs and the chances he took with the music seemed crass and unnecessary to me. More seriously, something has been lost in the balance between wit and dark content. Thank god for Kristin Scott Thomas. She's the only thing saving this film from being a Noel Coward parody.

Noël Coward wrote "Easy Virtue", the same summer he wrote "Hay Fever". It was produced several years later in the wake of his other great melodrama, "The Vortex". In his autobiography, "Present Indicative", Coward says that his object in writing the play was to present a comedy in the structure of a tragedy "to compare the déclassée woman of to-day with the more flamboyant demi-mondaine of the 1890's," - one in which he deliberately attacked the "smug attitude of Larita's in-laws." In short, Noël Coward wrote "Meet the Parents" in 1924. That clash of culture, set in a time of almost identical financial boom and bust, is at the heart of Stephan Elliott's excellent adaptation. There is nothing 'liberal' or 'cheap' about it. "Easy Virtue" is all the things a Noël Coward film should be - it's smart, sexy and shrewd. This is the story of a young man, John Whittaker played by Ben Barnes, who brings home a thoroughly inappropriate wife, Larita (Jessica Biel). You can sympathize with him - she's gorgeous, but basically he's brought a giraffe to Cambridgshire. His mother, Mrs Whittaker (in a diamond cut performance by Kristin Scott-Thomas) is not amused. Underscoring it all is a deftly sardonic performance by Colin Firth as the emotionally absent head of the household, Mr Whittaker. What happens to them all is a tragedy of time and place, but, like the fate of the family pet, it's also hilarious and satisfying. Stephan Elliott was a brilliant choice for this film. Coward was the consummate inside outsider - the son of a clerk who mingled with aristocracy. Stephan Elliott is an Australian living in London - moving in the rare circle of celebrity and wealth. They are both masters of comic subversion. Elliott has been true to Coward's desire to present a thoroughly contemporary film. His soundtrack, score and the subtle use of special effects all show us that this is a film to be taken lightly, while the characters played by Colin Firth and Kristin Scott-Thomas give us the weight and emotional resonance to let us know that they are serious. But the film belongs to Biel. She delivers all the spirit and energy of an American snowboarder, with all the elegant sophistication of an old time screen siren. She is the new world 'blowing in' to the old and is tremendously sympathetic with it. Add to that Ben Barnes' growing strength as an actor, and immense appeal to younger audiences and you have a film that will introduce a whole new generation to the romance of period films, while satisfying older fans that there is still life in the genre yet.

Easy Virtue is a very liberal adaptation of Noel Coward's play. Director Stephan Elliot (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) has tried to make the film more contemporary and very distinct from the Merchant-Ivory school of film. The story is set in the roaring twenties where John (Ben Barnes) from an aristocratic English family marries Larita (Jessica Biel), an American race driver, after a whirlwind romance in France. However his mother Veronica (Kristin Scott Thomas) is none too pleased while John's father Jim (colin Firth) finds a soul mate in Larita. These relationships, including those with John's sisters, make for a very intriguing and entertaining hour and a half, The acting, as could be expected from such a cast is uniformly excellent with perhaps Jessica Biel standing out a little more. One of Stephan Elliot's nice touches is an anachronistic use of such songs as Car Wash and Sex Bomb, done in a very twenties style. The addition of a hilarious "dog scene" is another nice touch. Fans of Noel Coward (and even Merchant-Ivory) won't be disappointed.