The Importance of Being Earnest

Director Oliver Parker (An Ideal Husband) -- who also adapted the screenplay to include aspects from Wilde's unrevised four-act version of the play -- embraces the material with great gusto, delivering as charming and irresistible a film as one could demand.

Hearing Wilde's pithy lines in her mouth -- ''London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained 35 for years'' -- is worth the ticket price. In the end it's Dench who reminds us of the importance of enjoying Oscar Wilde.

The result is a film that is at best highly uneven and perversely at odds with itself. Luckily, Wilde's delicious sense of absurdity and peerlessly witty dialogue are pretty indestructible, and "Earnest" itself remains a peerless comedy of manners.

Amounts to a complete misreading of Wilde, who used the conventions of artifice to lampoon artificiality. Parker totally misses the point by tacking on such cinematic curlicues -- apparently, in his eagerness to seem movie-friendly, he's too hung up on the importance of not being earnest.

Despite good taste and good will, this romp through Victorian parlors frequently falls flat on its rump.

The antics are wacky -- but far from Wilde.

A comedy in the last century and a drama in the new one. At least, that's the dumbfounding impression left by writer-director Oliver Parker's utterly miscalculated film adaptation of Wilde's play.