Dandy_Desmond Bright Young Things concerns a group of bored rich twenty somethings, drinking, whoring and snorting drugs in the 1930s. Great idea, sadly with characters such as these I couldn't care less if the film started then all the characters line up and have a piano dropped on their heads. Credits. Rich, idle, bored. Sad tale eh, poor things. Sadly I was waiting for Mr Fry (himself a depressive rich bloke went to Cambridge etc) to show us how empty and soulless these imbeciles were. And I waited. One really obnoxious woman went potty and ended up in an asylum. Peter O'Toole appeared and wrote a cheque in the name of Charlie Chaplin, John Mills did some coke. Then the camp guy got caught with a bloke, then the writer won loads of money and give it to a drunk to put on a horse and spent the rest of the film trying to get it back and then...I went to the toilet so I must have missed the lesson to be learn-ed in all this. That the young born rich are indeed mindless idiots who have no aim or desire in life as they have had it all on a silver platter from the start. Still the war came. Then it all ended. It looked good though. I was a bit drunk at the time.

sandra small The film Bright Young Things, adapted from Evelyne Waugh's acclaimed fable; Vile Bodies is manic in its pace. As such it is reminiscent of His Girl Friday (1940) with its legendary speed of comedy delivery. The difference with His Girl Friday the speed of the comedy delivery is applied to loquaciousness with a bit of slap stick. Director Stephen Fry of Bright Young Things on the other hand utilises speed to articulate the decadence of the period. As such he is affective in his endeavour of making his point of a decadent aristocracy.The depressing aspect of the film is that the aristocracy are portrayed as decadent party animals, unlike the poor who in their pursuit of escaping their worries are (in today's post modern Britain) often labelled as 'feckless' by the tabloid press. But as the impoverished poor struggled to feed themselves across Europe during the inter-war period, the aristocracy idly carried on without social conscience or obligation to responsibility. Such decadence at the expense of the poor contributed towards the rise of extreme politics in Europe during the 1920s.Contributing to the masses' public perception of the idle rich decadence of the inter-war period was the tabloid press. The press baron in the film is shown as suppressing the realities of the issues affecting the ordinary people of Britain for profit, and thereby concealing truth.While Fry adeptly captures the decadence of the 20s in Bright Young Things, Peter O'Toole steels the film with his outstanding satirising of the stereotypical English eccentric. As the eccentric of the upper classes O'Toole's character Colnol Blout is the epitome of English two faced diplomacy of the ruling classes. The example being when he writes a cheque out for £1000 to help his prospective son-in-law to marry his daughter, when he signs it in the name of Charlie Chaplin. A typical English snub no less!Excellent film, well acted and brilliantly directed.

JoeytheBrit Watching Stephen Fry making his directorial debut is a little bit like watching a toddler the first time he rides a bike without stabilisers. Things are dangerously wobbly to begin with then smooth out nicely as self-belief grows before everything comes crashing down due to over-confidence. Based on Evelyn Waugh's 'Vile Bodies', this film chronicles the debauched lifestyle of a group of paradoxically penniless rich kids (i.e. they're mostly lords and ladies but have no visible means of income) in a Britain of the 30s that would be unrecognisable to all but the impoverished aristocracy. This is a rarefied world that no doubt existed and seemed real to the likes of Waugh but which is unrecognisable to the majority of British people. Without doubt, however, this movie, in its representation of that period and lifestyle, provides us with an absorbing and entertaining tale.Apart from our hero Adam Fenwick-Symes (Stephen Campbell Moore, another débutant giving a good account of himself) the characters in this film aren't so much introduced as wander in like party guests you drunkenly met in another room ten minutes ago. They all share a propensity for decadence, and the affectation of declaring most everything to be a frantic bore, and are all, without exception, empty shells. We've seen it all before in the likes of Brideshead Revisited and The Sun Also Rises, but Fry manages to keep us hooked despite the clumsy manner in which he films those opening scenes. Perhaps it's because of the sumptuous production design that captures the feel of these bright young things' hedonistic lifestyle, or perhaps it's because of the amiably random manner in which Fry begins to pull the threads of his story together. Either way, despite Fry's apparent determination to use every scene transition known to the film world, and to make use of at least a little snippet from each of a multitude of cameras used to shoot many scenes, the story manages to hold your attention and drag you along with it, leaving you asking yourself why you're interested in a bunch of characters who are all about as deep as lemon peel.The story and the characters follow a predictable arc, but Fry fills the film with enough detail and ingenuity to at least keep us entertained. A host of famous faces provide a series of cameos that last little more than seconds in some cases – and this is without doubt the only film in which you will see the redoubtable Sir John Mills snorting cocaine. Fenella Woolgar outshines everybody in her scenes as the agreeably dippy cokehead Agatha, who brings a whole new meaning to the term 'powdering one's nose' and eventually parties herself into an insane asylum. In a role that strays into parody every now and then, she manages to provide a brief glimpse of a lost soul behind the party face, and her 'dream' speech pretty much sums up the entire social scene in which the characters are embroiled. James McAvoy, as the ill-fated Lord Balcairn (AKA Mr. Chatterbox) also stands out in one of few sympathetic roles.The film loses its momentum in the final act, when Fry moves from adapting Waugh's story to altering it completely, and we are left with an ending that is not only contrived but stretches credibility beyond its limits. Having managed to have steered a path that at least avoided conventionality in terms of plot, Fry suddenly makes a complete about-turn and presents us with a finale that stands out as a monumental piece of misjudgement. Perhaps Waugh's ending was too downbeat for the backers. It's a shame if that is the case, because it will mean that Fry most likely compromised himself. Somewhere down the line someone needs to show an ounce of integrity and fight for an ending that is true to the nature of the story, rather than compromising with a soap-opera climax that tarnishes the good work that has gone before.Bottom line: BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS is a worthy directorial debut from Stephen Fry and, while it's no classic, has a lot going for it. It's probably not worth seeking out, but if it happens to cross your path it's definitely worth watching. Just be sure to stop watching after the war scenes….

Tom Hutton I saw Bright Young Things tonight. Sorry. But it had to be done.Since I expected it to be awful, it didn't seem so bad. It's certainly a very pretty film. The main character I suppose is intended to be Evelyn Waugh. And he does a good job, and a bad one. Sometimes he behaves and talks just like you would think Waugh would have. At other times he's a million miles off. And the same with the plot lines. Some remind you of Saki, but others of Spielberg. I laughed out loud at times, and cringed at others. The ending is more shamelessly syrupy than anything even Spielberg would dare. Almost Bollywood. Waugh would have hated it.I think this is a confused effort. Stephen Fry didn't know if he wanted to do Pinewood or Hollywood. So he did them both. Unfortunately it's an uneven mix that falls apart at the end.