Fresh
An enjoyable, minor, lustrously shot revamping of Oscar Wilde's play about the perpetually interlocked manners of love and deception.
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
An Ideal Husband
He just doesn't know it yet.
1999 · 1h 37m · PG-13
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Directed by
Oliver Parker
Overview
Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful Government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father. Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously.
Director and cast
- Oliver Parker Director
- Cate Blanchett as Lady Gertrude Chiltern
- Minnie Driver as Miss Mabel Chiltern
- Rupert Everett as Lord Arthur Goring
- Julianne Moore as Mrs. Laura Cheveley
- Jeremy Northam as Sir Robert Chiltern
- Peter Vaughan as Phipps
- Ben Pullen as Tommy Trafford
- Marsha Fitzalan as Countess
- Lindsay Duncan as Lady Markby
- John Wood as Lord Caversham
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
85%
Tomatometer
Fresh
Smooth-flowing direction, a shrewdly pruned script and a top-flight ensemble cast that visibly relishes both the dialogue and one another's perfs make this a tony item for upscale, mature audiences.
Derek Elley, Variety
Fresh
Parker has made a sensible cinematic translation of Wilde's play, intercutting scenes which would have been played consecutively on the stage.
Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle
Fresh
Wilde was always about lots more than witty repartee, and as sparkling as his play is as drawing-room comedy, it reveals his concern with the timeless values of unselfish love and forgiveness.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Rotten
[T]his Husband plods and ambles and bears the burden of a soundtrack that resembles a wimpy meditation tape.
Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
More films
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)
Comedy · Drama · History · Romance · PG
Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ('Ernest') on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities.
- Runtime
- 1h 37m
- Director
- Oliver Parker
- Cast
- Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon
IMDb
6.8
Rotten Tomatoes
57%
Metacritic
60
Comments
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