Relative Values Review

Why make a movie these days of Noel Coward's Fifties satire on the English upper classes? Its a question you have to ask yourself both before and after this pleasant enough, but ultimately forgettable country-house frolic, which seems to have no real reason for existing, except to bring Julie Andrews back to our screens and provide the odd line of neatly turned dialogue for expert farceurs like Stephen Fry and Sophie Thompson.

The youthful Earl of Marshwood (Edward Atterton) starts all the fuss by announcing his intention to marry temperamental American starlet Miranda Frayle (Jeanne Tripplehorn), which leaves his doting mama, the Countess (Andrews, suitably regal) wondering which way to turn. Her toffee-nosed peers are quite appalled at the idea, but having the couple to stay at the country seat for a weekend should provide some answers. Complicating matters is the revelation from the Countess' trusted secretary Moxie (Thompson, who all but steals the picture), that she and the supposed Hollywood sensation are actually long-lost sisters who hate one anothers guts. Moxie offers to leave immediately, until a plan is hastily arranged to pass her off as an aristocratic guest so that Miranda wont twig its the sibling she left behind in English poverty years before.

Chaos escalates, but in a very predictable way, and although Fry is absolutely spot-on as the canny butler, family friend Colin Firth's attempt at queeny drollery in the clipped style perfected by Noel Coward himself as a performer simply falls short of the mark (where's Rupert Everett when you really need him?). So does a lot of the rest of the film, it has to be said, since it doesn't really snap together in the way that it ought to, and stylistically never really manages the Fifties look its obviously going for. On the whole, so light and feathery, there's nothing really there.