Dorian Gray

Ben Barnes (Narnia: Prince Caspian), a handsome British actor a la mode of young Keanu Reeves, was a natural choice for the title role in Dorian Gray. A less obvious casting option was that of Colin Firth as Lord Henry Wotton, the bearded Victorian aristocrat whose cynical bon mots lead Dorian astray in gin shops and worse. There's a third key lead actor, Ben Chaplin as the painter of Dorian's secret portrait. Female interests are minor characters.

Oscar Wilde wrote the classic tale of the picture that aged while its sitter stayed infernally youthful. Toby Finlay adapted it for the screen, and purists were upset by changes to the characters, motivations and ending. Those were all the more surprising because the period drama's director is Oliver Parker, an actor turned screenwriter-director who'd previously created his own versions of Wilde's An Ideal Husband (successfully, with Rupert Everett) and The Importance of Being Earnest (less effectively, with Everett, Firth and Judi Dench).

This time, Parker crafted a typical UK film industry costume melodrama. The cinematography, settings, lighting, CGI and editing sport admirable craftsmanship, but the screenplay doesn't. It adds bodice-ripping, homo-erotica, maggots, orgiastic posturing and gore to a Faustian fable.

Maybe this Parker-Finlay version would have worked better, in the style of Hammer horror movies, if Dorian hadn't always looked as deadpan as Keanu, if Firth's character hadn't been less of a sulky schoolmaster, if the portrait had aged sickeningly rather than putrefied laughably.