Bright Young Things
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Broadbent, Jim Carter, Simon Callow, Stephen Campbell MooreBrand: Warner Brothers
Primary Contributor: Dan Aykroyd
Primary Contributor: Stephen Campbell Moore
Primary Contributor: Mortimer, Emily
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-02-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Movie Reviews of Bright Young Things
Movie Review: A Snappy,Jazzy look at "The Lost Generation"
Summary: 5 Stars
Between the two World Wars, a group of young idealists,Bohemian in attitude and coming from either the artist/poet/musician throngs or from the idle sensationally bored upper class , needed to occupy their time with parties,fashion,drugs,booze,reckless living and the new way of thought,all to find some kind of meaning to life.They were known as "The Lost Generation".These were the days of Hemingway,Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.Lots of them tragic figures,brilliant beyond belief,but many brought to despair and suicide.
Actor Stephen Fry has adapted with great pizzazz Evelyn Waugh's satirical 1930 novel "Vile (Decaying) Bodies" in a rip roaring,carefree and "care-less" depiction of this group of Bohemian Richie-Riches known as "Bright Young Things".The film is fast paced and bawdy.The characters are feckless and obnoxious.They are living on the edge of disaster and the world flocks to read about them in the London Tabloids.In fact, they garner more attention than "The Royals".(Face it, has celebrity goings on ever changed? Britney beat out Obama in the headlines yesterday! C'mon?)These young people had no interest in politics,they treated money like water,and excess was the name of the game!They lived for the moment knowing that somehow it would end....but who cared?
I have always admired the generosity and sensitivity of Stephen Fry (BLACK ADDER,WILDE,PETER'S FRIENDS) as an actor these past 20+ years,and as a director I admire him even more.The cast assembled for this look at "The Lost Generation" is a veritable UK Who's-Who: Jim Broadbent,Imelda Staunton,James MacAvoy (currently in ATONEMENT),Emily Mortimer (currently in LARS AND THE REAL GIRL),Julia McKenzie and Stephen Campbell Moore as well as Americans staples Dan Aykroyd and Stockard Channing....and Fry lets them sizzle to a fizzle as these "bright young things" burn their candles at both ends and in the middle until some of them snuff out completely,lost in oblivion.Society dances on the edge in this film,and not since WILD PARTY or CHICAGO has a film so captured the reckless abandon of a generation.This is not a stodgey English Period Piece all corsetted and prim like Waugh's other famous "Brideshead Revisited" and "A Handful of Dust" (Both made into rather dreary films IMO).BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS is a brilliantly acted, all stops pulled out, nonsensical romp through the 1930's leading up to the Blitz.
The DVD extras are wonderfully informative including a small featurette filmed by "the runners" who worked on the film,giving the casual filmgoer a day to day look at the behind the scenes work and workers on films.The other featurette is a look at Fry and also includes a superb commentary.WORTH IT from a marvelous actor in his directorial debut.
Other films dedicated to "The Lost Generation" are WAITING FOR THE MOON,THE MODERNS,NORA,TOM AND VIV,SCOTT AND ZELDA,THE GREAT GATSBY, A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY and the Broadway play THE VIOLET HOUR.
Summary of Bright Young Things
"Some time in the past when things were much as they are now, only more so..." A satirical comedy as well as a love story, Bright Youngs Things marks the the directoral debut of actor Stephen Fry. "Bright Young Things," says Fry, "is a period film shot with modern pace and cinematography. It deals with fame, sexual scandal, greed, night-clubbing, and the frantic glamour of youth."While the central plot of Bright Young Things is a romance, it is also a highly topical social comedy that shows a conservative older generation failing to understand the club culture, music, dance, and frenetic pace of its children, modern society at its most decadent and most colorful is fully on display as is the popular media fueled by gossip columnists and paparazzi who dominate a tabloid press propelled by rumor and scandal.
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