List Price: $27.98You Pay Only: $10.99 You Save: $16.99 (61%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 9780780650213
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780650212
Label: New Line Home Video
Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Line Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: February 08, 2005
Running Time: 106 minutes
Sales Rank: 18098
Studio: New Line Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
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Editorial Review:
Description:
'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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Snappy,Jazzy look at "The Lost Generation"
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Hmmmm
Sorry Mr. Ebert, for my wife and I disagree. We struggled to get this one through to the end but I am giving two stars because of the era and it did have a few bright spots. You can skip this one and not miss anything.
PS-If the film was accurate, I didn't realize the 'white powder' was so popular back then....interesting.
Rating:  - Four and a half stars, because of its wonderful ending!
"Bright Young Things" is brilliantly written and directed by Stephen Fry, the enormous talent who played "Jeeves" opposite Hugh Laurie in 23 episodes of the wonderful British comedy, "Jeeves and Wooster" (1990-1993), which should be a collector's item.
This film has an ensemble cast of great British actors, and depicts British decadence in all of its glory prior to World War II. Few should ever doubt Fry's talents, and they are on full display in this film.
Stephen Campbell Moore as "Adam Fenwick-Symes," and Emily Mortimer as "Nina Blount" are terrific, and their love transcends the inaneness, perfidies and puffery of Britain's upper class.
Rating: - Too, too shaming
Evelyn Waugh's most characteristic novel VILE BODIES would seem almost impossibly difficult to adapt for film; Stephen Fry tries here, and achieves much, but doesn't quite pull it off. Some of the characters from Waugh's novel are captured perfectly (particularly the desperate gossip columnist the Earl Balcairn, played here with real pathos and energy by the wonderful James McAvoy, and the gloomy wife of a prime minister, played all too briefly by Imelda Staunton), but others fall very wide of Waugh's mark. Many of the actors seems to be trying too hard, which is absolutely not in the spirit of the original novel. Fry makes the wild 30s parties seem far too much like their analogues from his contemporary experience, and he dooms the screenplay by providing it with a false romantic ending that goes grossly against the grain of Waugh's novel.
Rating:  - not bad - but pales in comparison with the book
It is difficult to fairly assess a film when you've recently read and immensely enjoyed the book it was based on. Although - ideally - Bright Young Things should be evaluated for its own faults and merits and not be measured against Vile Bodies, I - admittedly - cannot help but compare it to Evelyn Waugh's biting comic satire.
For the most part, Bright Young Things is faithful to the plot of Vile Bodies. It follows the lives of several young London socialites as they hop from one glamorous party to the next, always with an air of wit and boredom, and it focuses on the might-be romance between Adam, a poor young writer, and his lovely fiance, Nina. Although light and comic on its surface, Bright Young Things also preserves the dark undercurrent that runs through the novel.
And yet, this film - in my opinion - misses the mark. To begin with, I believe that it spends too much time trying to develop its plot and not enough time lingering over the characters' verbal musings. Vile Bodies truly excels in its dialogue, not in the development of its story. And, because the makers of Bright Young Things apparently failed to realize this, the film is resultantly much less funny.
I also feel that Bright Young Things takes itself too seriously. The romance between Adam and Nina comes across as much more sincere in the film than it does in the book. Also, the film's ending is very different from the book's; it tidies things up neatly and inserts a sort of hopeful, ... Read More
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