Review: Easy Virtue (2009)

[Steve Rhodes]

EASY VIRTUE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  **

Mrs. Whittaker (Kristin Scott Thomas) has a first name, but it's almost 
never spoken, since she is a prim and proper member of the British 
aristocracy.  Her husband, Mr. Whittaker (a grizzled looking Colin Firth), 
survived the Great War but mentally checked out afterwards.  Together the 
two of them and their two grown daughters, Hilda (Kimberley Nixon) and 
Marion (Katherine Parkinson), live in a large mansion only slightly smaller 
than a royal palace.

But the apparently wealthy Whittakers have had to economize some lately, 
letting go of six of the servants and heating only half of their sprawling 
house.  One day, their comfortable existence is disturbed by the arrival of 
their own son, John (Ben Barnes), who has scandalously married Larita 
(Jessica Biel), a bleached blonde race car driver.  Older than John, Larita 
is a widow whose last husband died of cancer.  She is also an American, 
which makes her immediately suspected of not having the proper breeding.

EASY VIRTUE is a mild comedy of manners set in the Roaring Twenties.  You 
might think any comedy filled with flappers would be easy to make funny, but 
this one isn't.  It is a comedy which deserves no laughs and few smiles. 
The film is by director Stephan Elliott, whose last movie was EYE OF THE 
BEHOLDER, a truly awful would-be thriller from 1999, starring Ewan McGregor 
and Ashley Judd.  EASY VIRTUE, however, is never painfully bad.  It's just 
consistently bland.  You probably won't hate it.  You'll more likely just be 
indifferent to it.

The retreaded dialog offers little for the viewers.  About as good as it 
ever gets comes in an exchange between Marion and her father when they first 
lay eyes on Larita, as she and John drive up to the family estate for the 
first time.  "I don't feel like smiling," Marion tells her father.  He 
quickly admonishes her, "You're English.  Fake it."

There is one and only one satisfying part of the production.  The songs are 
uniformly sublime with, "You Do Something To Me" being a typically lovely 
one.  Buy the sound track.  Skip the movie.

EASY VIRTUE runs 1:33.  It is rated PG-13 for "sexual content, brief partial 
nudity, and smoking throughout" and would be acceptable for kids around 10 
and up.

The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, May 29, 2009.  In 
the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Cinemark 
theaters and the Camera Cinemas.

Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
Email: Steve.Rhodes at InternetReviews.com

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