Stars in Love

This is great fun and a reminder of when actors and actresses just weren't welcome in polite society (and why). Just watching Colin Firth's face is delicious, he is subtle, funny and brilliant! The star-struck maid alone is worth the price of admission; and Stephen Frye is a perfect butler to Julie's elegant, polished master of each successive situation. Sophie Thompson steals the dinner scene and just about every other one she is in. This is a fabulous, literate comedy of manners with everyone spot-on with their characters. Every time I watch it I find something clever, witty and subtle that I missed the previous time. Just sit back and have fun watching all the stereotypes get skewered.

Most of the criticism has been because the gags of Noel Coward about class are not so funny now as they were then. But that is just to judge the film by the play. It's *mildly* funny - I dozed at the beginning but then woke up when I realised how enjoyable it was. The real gems are the superb performances all the way through and the way English and American life, mannerisms and etiquette of the 50's (when they were far more distinct) are portrayed so touchingly. Luxuriate in a nice comfy cinema seat (if they have them near you) and be pampered by it!

What can I say?

I loved this movie. It is a classic comedy of manners. Written by bitch extrodinaire Noel Coward, the movie sparkles with wit and one-liners. Colin Firth plays the resident bitch (very much a Noel Coward type characture). Julie Andrews is in fine form as the matriarch fearing her son is going to marry beneath the family by marrying Hollywood starlet Jeeane Tripplehorn, who looks gorgeous in this film.

Mad servants and stuck-up butlers abound, this movie is a real find.

And final praise must go to the person who steals this movie from under the very esteemed company, and that is Sophie Thompson as ladies maid Moxie. The dinner scenes where she is getting drunker, and drunker is the funniest parts of a very funny movie.

To be recommended.

For anyone who enjoys British class distinctions and the upstairs-downstairs culture of life among the manor born, this stylish tale of a Hollywood actress who is preparing to marry into a quirky aristocratic family is sumptuously designed and a great deal of fun. Julie Andrews shines, as does Jeanne Triplehorn and Stephen Fry as the butler who is impeccably correct amid the chaos which ensues when things inevitably begin to go awry. It is a farce that absolutely works. The 1950s era is captured with elegant attention to detail and the characters, for all their foibles, are likable and thoroughly engaging. Great entertainment for anyone who is lucky enough to happen upon it!

Relative Values was never given a Broadway production during the lifetime of Noel Coward. It only made it there in 1986 thirteen years after Noel died. But in the original British production the star was the formidable Gladys Cooper. She's in the role of Duchess of Marchwood so Julie Andrews had some big shoes to fill.

I'll have to say that Andrews did it good style and a British production of even a second line Noel Coward work is better than a lot that is around. What I found interesting that with his various trips across the pond Coward felt comfortable enough to put some American characters in his work.

Andrews is the mother of Edward Atterton who is a well known jet setting playboy who always comes home to mother especially when things go spectacularly bad or good. Depending on your point of view he arrives home with American movie star Jeanne Tripplehorn in tow who is on the rebound from a breakup. They're going to be married, a fact that does not please mother.

Neither does it please William Baldwin who is an action film star of the era, late Forties when the play was written. He's who Tripplehorn is on the rebound from and he wants her back. He knows full well that Tripplehorn would be bored to tears as the lady of the manor in training in the quiet English countryside.

Add to all of that Sophia Thompson is personal maid to Andrews and she's Tripplehorn's long lost sister. It all comes to a head when Tripplehorn starts spouting off the invented studio biography where Thompson who has a fake status of her own for the occasion just explodes and these two have a cat fight to beat all.

Observing all this are butler Stephen Fry and cousin Colin Firth who seems to be a permanent house guest. They get the lion's share of the Coward wit in the dialog. This is Coward who was the pet of the English society. But Coward's third voice in the film is that of Thompson. Coward came from some pretty humble background and she also might very well be modeled on Coward's good friend from adolescence Gertrude Lawrence who also came from most modest means.

Relative Values was a pleasure to see because other than his really acclaimed work like Blithe Spirit or Private Lives, too little of Coward is played today. We could certainly use some of his wit now. I often wonder what Coward would have made of some of the events of the last forty years.