The Importance of Being Earnest

Not Wilde enough

According to the posters, Stephen Fry finds this new adaptation of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest "stunning". As the posters also point out, "The name is the game". Fry's not there simply to signal this is a comedy, but because he played Oscar Wilde in the 1997 biopic. We love Oscar, as the popularity of Wilde made clear; we love his double life and his crucifixion at the hands of respectable society and the gutter press. As Saint Oscar's representative on earth, Mr Fry has some clout. If he smiles on this movie... Well, it must be seriously good.

Still more reassuring is the presence of the director Oliver Parker who, along with the actor Rupert Everett, worked on 1999's successful Wilde adaptation, An Ideal Husband – which grossed $18.5m (£12m) in the States. And yet that play has an advantage over Earnest. Both concern men who want to keep facts about themselves hidden, and so can be tied in with Oscar's own, thrilling story. Their secrets, however, would seem to be on a different scale.

In An Ideal Husband, we truly believe that Sir Robert Chiltern's sleazy past is capable of crushing his career – and repulsing his wife – which is why the sight of his frightened face, floating through one scene after another, creates shivers. By comparison, that Jack Worthing (Colin Firth) has invented a brother called Earnest, whose identity he assumes when in London, and "was born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag", appears footling. True, it may horrify his prospective mother-in-law Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench), and disconcert his fiancée Gwendolen (Frances O'Connor), but we, the audience, never really have to fret.

All manner of things have been done to distract us from this melodrama-deficit. First off, material from the original four-act version of the play has been dragged in, mainly to do with the unpaid debts of Jack's best friend, one Algernon Moncreiff (Everett). Then there's the attempt to jazz up the story, or Moulin Rouge it. Thus we get anachronistic music and a series of kitsch daydreams, supplied by Jack's ward (and Algy's love interest) Cecily (Reese Witherspoon). All this is dire. But even more dreadful is the physical humour set in the countryside, clearly meant to "humanise" the characters. Cecily, like Gwendolen, is obsessed with the name Earnest and, under the impression that Algy is Jack's brother (it's a long story), declares her love. When both women realise they've been duped, they signal their ire by riding past the men on horseback. The swains get spattered in mud. Side splitting.

Still, the cast, you'd think, would make up for everything. Back in 1984, Everett and Firth played public-school boys in Another Country – and were the perfect dandy-dowdy double act (my favourite line, delivered by a sleepy and blissfully love-sick Everett after Firth's stern lecture on Lenin, "You mean, he wouldn't have liked me?"). Since then, one suspects Everett has spent too much time being told he looks gorgeous when he pouts (ditto Firth, re: his frown). Failing to summon up insouciance, Everett rolls his eyes and does "funny" voices (also disconcerting – his increasingly slopey shoulders). Firth, trying to look cross, bursts metaphorical blood vessels. Their squabbling over food should be adorable – it simply makes you feel peckish.

Both men, in truth, seem bored. It would have been nice to see Firth cast against type as Algy, while Everett reputedly had a hankering to play Lady Bracknell. Now that would have been interesting. Dench is being sold as the jewel in this film's crown, but even she fails to dazzle. Fatally, this Lady Bracknell laughs at her own jokes. You can't understand, given this yielding to frivolity, why she herself doesn't have a double life. You certainly don't know why even bold Gwendolen quails before her. A flashback at the end (invented by Parker) reveals this bastion of respectability was once a chorus girl and that she and Lord Bracknell slept together before they were wed. In the closing scene, in another new twist, Jack gets the last laugh regarding his name and Bracknell is in on the joke (she literally throws the rulebook away). A round of applause for Lady B!

I suspect Parker thought modern audiences wouldn't accept a Lady Bracknell who was truly formidable. But this says more about him than us. In Parker's An Ideal Husband, Everett is told there are more fish in the sea, to which he replies – "but I don't want to marry a fish, for I'm so likely to end up with an old trout". Dench's Bracknell is very much a woman who doesn't want to be seen as an old trout, which not only takes the wicked beauty out of her lines, but makes a nonsense of the play's conceit.

In Parker's world, gentlemen marry up-the-duff chorus girls. In Wilde's world, no such generosity exists. Without wealth or breeding, you simply don't count. Those who don't appreciate this state of affairs are entitled to create an alternative universe. One in which they get to be the writer, director and star of their own lives and win little battles, such as choosing the name of their future husband, or dashing at will between counties. The big battles, however, can't be won, unless fate takes a hand. Which is to say, individuals are as powerless as children, if not more so. As Gwendolen says, (in one of the many fantastic lines that doesn't make it into the film): "Whatever influence I ever had over Mamma, I lost at the age of three."

Lady Bracknell talks a lot about revolution (she's not a fan) and the play – in its own quiet, abstract way – makes you see why upheaval is required. In the movie, by contrast, there's no need for change. Everything's already topsy-turvy.

In Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, all the wild, modern-day input actually made more sense of Shakespeare's words. With The Importance of Being Earnest, the text and the new-fangled interpretation seem truly at odds. On the most trivial of levels, this is probably because the film was made in a rush and there wasn't enough time to plan the production or rehearse the actors. A more serious problem is that Parker doesn't trust his material and – under the guise of pointing up Wilde's subversive wit – has opted to play safe. Two chappies who overpower all obstacles thanks to their cheeky charm? This is Men Behaving Badly, for people who enjoy cream teas.

If Saint Oscar was bad, sitcom Oscar is worse. During Parker's An Ideal Husband, the characters whisper among themselves as they watch a stage version of The Importance of Being Earnest. Here's what's "stunning": three years and millions of dollars later, film audiences could be forgiven for doing the same.