For a playwright who was imprisoned for two years for the "gross indecency" of being homosexual, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was a pretty funny guy. Earnest is rightly considered to be the peak of Wilde's wit, and the 1952 film version, with an indelible performance by Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell, deserves landmark status. So why remake it? From the looks of this freewheeling, loose-limbed take on Earnest, writer-director Oliver Parker, who also filmed Wilde's An Ideal Husband, wanted to blow…

Truthful revelations finally save two eligible London bachelors, who get tripped up by lies and upper-class superficialities in the late 19th century at a lavish country cottage where the young society ladies they hope to marry and the insufferably snobbish mother they hope to avoid have also convened.

Story

London bachelor John (Jack) Worthing, who has a murky background, and his roguish, spendthrift friend Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff pursue romance but are each deceitful in their own ways. Jack,…