Easy Virtue (1 1/2 Stars)

Jessica Biel & Colin Firth in the movie Easy Virtue. Movie Review & Trailer

Noel Coward's 1924 play "Easy Virtue" has a peculiar history of adaptation.

The 1927 Alfred Hitchcock silent went its own melodramatic way, without the benefit of Coward's rejoinders but with some clever visual suspense flourishes.

Now the Australian director and screenwriter Stephan Elliott, best known for "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," has pulled the material in the opposite direction, going for camp and slapstick and bizarre musical interpolations.

Such as?

The theme song from "Car Wash," redone as a tea-dance ditty. I like the theme song from "Car Wash." I like Coward. Put them in the same room, however, and you have an example of why "Easy Virtue" resists nearly everything Elliott throws at it.

The central female role has been Americanized, more in theory than in practice.

You have to wonder why screenwriters Elliott and Sheridan Jobbins didn't go further, so the emancipated Detroit road-rally ace, Larita, played by Jessica Biel, didn't have to sound so indelibly English. (She says things like, "I refuse to invest in amateur theatrics to convince you of my sincerity.") Coward's verbal dexterity proves elusive, and as she struggles with her character, the movie struggles along with her.

It's love at first sight for young Johnny (Ben Barnes) and "Larry" (Biel).

They marry, and Johnny's family instantly disapproves, none more so than the bitter matriarch played by Kristin Scott Thomas. She delivers a second-balcony performance, meaning it might work better if viewed from the second balcony.

Elliott's notion is to pitch "Easy Virtue" almost shrilly at first and then humanize the situation, which involves the precarious family manor's fortunes and the story behind the death of Larita's first husband.

Elliott nearly turns the whole affair into a musical, with characters singing snatches of Coward and Cole Porter songs. But his sense of humor is extremely broad. Scoring a fox-hunt sequence to "Sex Bomb" -- leave that stuff to Baz Luhrmann.

As the Great War veteran and sardonic patriarch of his starchy brood, Colin Firth alone resembles a human being on planet Earth, underplaying with an effectively melancholy air. He's excellent.

"Easy Virtue" may be a bauble, as Larita's described at one point, but Coward's examination of hypocrisy demands real skill.

The style should suggest "whipped cream with knives," as Stephen Sondheim once described "A Little Night Music."

Elliott's film is more like curdled milk with a spork.

Easy Virtue MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sexual content, brief partial nudity and smoking throughout).

Running time: 1:36.

Starring: Jessica Biel (Larita); Colin Firth (Mr. Whittaker); Kristin Scott Thomas (Mrs. Whittaker); Ben Barnes (John).

Directed by Stephan Elliott;

written by Elliott and Sheridan Jobbins, based on the play by Noel Coward;

produced by Barnaby Thompson, Joe Abrams and James D. Stern.

A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Easy Virtue Movie Review - Jessica Biel & Colin Firth