Imperfect marriage

>> Oscar Wilde blanded down in An Ideal Husband

by MATTHEW HAYS

Rupert Everett fans everywhere have been waiting for his breakthrough lead role, ever since he stole the show from Julia Roberts in My Best Friend's Wedding. Playing her gay sidekick, Everett won over new fans in a mainstream genre and appeared to present some kind of breakthrough for openly gay actors. All Everett needed was top billing in a great film, and he would arrive.

Unfortunately, An Ideal Husband, based on the Oscar Wilde play of the same name, is not the film we've been waiting for. Everett, who's undeniably always nice to look at, seems to coast his way through the role, occasionally rising to the task of delivering a bit of Wildean wisdom with some gusto.

Everett plays a playboy bachelor living in London in the 1890s who wallows in his own superficiality. Single is a status he'd like to retain, despite the clear overtures of much apparently attractive and suitable wife material. When Everett's politician friend (Jeremy Northam) is threatened with a vicious bit of blackmail which jeopardizes both his marriage and his career, he confides in Everett. Who, in turn, sets about to manipulate An Ideal Husband's secondary cast members into line, pushing for an all's-well-that-end's-well conclusion.

Certainly, the challenges facing director-screenwriter Oliver Parker are daunting. Fatigued by a few too many standard-issue, Merchant Ivory versions of history, audiences have become accustomed to spicier, far more unusual period pieces (witness Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth or the anachronism-laden, Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love). As well, An Ideal Husband also pales to last year's biopic Wilde, in which Stephen Fry did a brilliant, uncanny job of bringing the scribe to life--warts and all.

An Ideal Husband does little to renew or invigorate Wilde's original work; though political scandals are always germane, in a post-Monica Lewinsky world, the filmmakers are going to have to come up with something better than this. We're left feeling like we're watching a so-so production at the Centaur (not a good thing, for sure).

A damn pity. The cast alone--which includes Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore and Minnie Driver, as well as Everett and Northam--is enough to leave Wilde fans salivating. Alas, Everett and Wilde fans alike--and I proudly hold memberships in both fan clubs--will have to await their next respective projects.

An Ideal Husband opens Friday, June 25