An Ideal Husband

Oliver Parker, 1995 (8.1*)
If you've never seen Oscar Wilde, this is a good place to start, with a romantic comedy with enough drama and intrigue to maintain tension and plot. Jeremy Northam is an upstanding member of Parliament, happily married to Cate Blanchett, but who is being blackmailed for a political vote by Julianne Moore. Best friend Rupert Everett attempts to help hold it all together, and along the way the plot twists and turns in typical Wilde style. Minnie Driver is dazzling (terrific costumes and hats) as romantic interest, and the production beautifully captures the aristocratic lifestyle of the era. A sophisticated comedy of the type the British seem to excel in creating.

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The Importance of Being Earnest

Oliver Parker, 2002 (7.5*)
Parker once again tackles Oscar Wilde, this time remaking the 40's bw classic. Colin Firth and dedicated bachelor Rupert Everett are best friends. Each has a secret life he has invented to enable getting away: Colin escapes to the city from the country, where he is ward and executor for Reese Witherspoon, while Rupert escapes the city and creditors by fleeing to Colin's country estate. Each man gets into romantic entanglements, Firth with Everett's cousin Frances O'Conner (whose dodgy mother and Rupert's aunt Judi Dench is a stickler for tradition), Everett with Witherspoon. The title comes from Reese vowing to only marry a man named Earnest, even getting the name tattoed on her derriere. This is classic situation comedy, in this case romantic comedy, in which characters will stop at no length to get the mate of their fancy.
Note: In Wilde's An Ideal Husband, the characters all attend a theatre performance of Earnest.

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