TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Bill Slocum "Bright Young Things" is a comedy that's never funny, a period piece that doesn't know what period it's in, and a party film that leaves you with the hangover.When writer-director Stephen Fry decided to make an adaptation of an Evelyn Waugh novel, he could have done himself a favor and not adapted "Vile Bodies." It's an episodic satire on the lives of a group of London club kids in the late 1920s that attempts to elicit laughter from the nasty ways they are run to ground by the world around them. The characters aren't meant for any deeper emotional investment than lab rats, though Fry seems to believe otherwise.At the center of the story, in both novel and film, is young Adam (Stephen Campbell Moore), who at the start of our story has lost his prized manuscript and is desperately trying to find new sources of funding with which to marry his lover Nina (Emily Mortimer). Opportunity comes in the form of an offer from publisher Lord Monomark (Dan Aykroyd) who wants Adam's help "tearing the lid off the young, idle, and rich.""I put Seignior Mussolini on the front page, no one buys a copy," he laments. "But a picture of one of your set in a nightclub, I can't print enough copies."The problem with both the novel and the film is this interesting idea is dropped almost before it begins, in favor of a number of other outrageous episodes which seem to act on the principle that anything can be made merry provided it moves fast enough. Like a strange major who makes off with some money Adam wanted to bet on a long-shot horse. Or a party that winds up finding themselves in the Prime Minister's residence. Or a car race that loses a wayward driver. All of this is drawn out as if it were funny merely by being incongruous.The film is worse on a few counts. First, Fry by necessity condenses the story but is at pains to include almost every character that appears in the book, as a way of facilitating assorted cameos that run from extraneous (Richard E. Grant as an angry Jesuit) to sad (John Mills as a mute coke sniffer). Second, he invests his version with an elegiac sadness that feels totally out of place in the second half. Nothing says comedy like a man sticking his head in an oven, or another tearfully discovering his homosexual lifestyle exposed.Even the main romance, a matter of crass opportunism in the book, is presented as a kind of real love story, even heroic as the Roaring '20s zip suddenly ahead to Dunkirk and the Blitz. Fry doesn't seem to trust either Waugh's wit or his own to make "Bright Young Things" work on comedic grounds, or else he really thinks the characters worth celebrating. The result is a doubled-down waste of our time.

cameron42 I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The story is lively and great, the dialog quick,witty and fabulous, darling. The performances are outstanding, particularly Stephan Campbell Moore, David Tennent, James McAvoy and especially Fenella Woolgar, who plays her supporting role brilliantly. Emily Mortimer's beauty makes her acting a non-issue, but she is perfect in her portrayal of the fickle love interest. Stephen Fry's direction pulls it all together in such a delightful way that I felt as if I was one of the bright young things tagging along from party to party, race course to race course, bomb-drop to bomb-drop, and home again.

Mark Roberts They managed somehow to wring Waugh's uproarious novel completely dry of any humor in the process of adapting this film to screen. A formidable, if not commendable task. Personally, I think the characters would often have to react to the various plot twists--e.g. when the protagonist (first) learns he will no longer be able to marry his girlfriend (I can't remember their names) and informs her of this--with something like apathy or resignation. I don't think, in the example I gave, Waugh suggests that either of them are significantly devastated by this (as one would normally be), but rather only slightly put out by it for a moment (which is what I find funny about it), whereas, if I remember correctly, in the movie the girl acts genuinely disappointed.But I could be way off the mark, and I apologise if that's so. To be fair, Waugh's satirical wit strikes me as being particularly difficult to adapt. And I wasn't calling anyone involved in the movie a 'howling cad' -- that's just a reference to the book.

Tom Hutton I saw Bright Young Things tonight. Sorry. But it had to be done.Since I expected it to be awful, it didn't seem so bad. It's certainly a very pretty film. The main character I suppose is intended to be Evelyn Waugh. And he does a good job, and a bad one. Sometimes he behaves and talks just like you would think Waugh would have. At other times he's a million miles off. And the same with the plot lines. Some remind you of Saki, but others of Spielberg. I laughed out loud at times, and cringed at others. The ending is more shamelessly syrupy than anything even Spielberg would dare. Almost Bollywood. Waugh would have hated it.I think this is a confused effort. Stephen Fry didn't know if he wanted to do Pinewood or Hollywood. So he did them both. Unfortunately it's an uneven mix that falls apart at the end.