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Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: In trying so hard not to take itself too seriously, Bright Young Things succeeds in being a lot of ado over nothing. Read more
Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: As anyone who has ever attended a party knows, people under the influence tend to be supremely dull unless you're one of them. Read more
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A brilliant, giddy satiric romp with a discreetly moralistic viewpoint beneath its high-style wit. Read more
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Fry, in his directing debut, shows an eye for style, a fine literary intelligence and an unmistakable heart. Read more
Carla Meyer, San Francisco Chronicle: Witty, energetic adaptation. Read more
David Edelstein, Slate: This is just how I'd always imagined one of my favorite comic novels should look and sound. Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Though Fry's movie has plenty of nasty wit, it lacks the sheer luxurious malice of Waugh's book. Fry is acerbic; Waugh is lethal. Read more
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Busy, unfocused, yet still acridly funny and moving. Read more
Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: As faithful to the spirit of the novel, and the era that inspired it, as a movie could be yet still feel as fresh as Paris Hilton dish on Page Six. Read more
Stephen Hunter, Houston Chronicle: One conceit of writer-director Stephen Fry is to dramatize parties as knots of chaos, social hurricanes that spill across the landscape this way and that, ruining lives, eating time, preventing progress of any kind. Read more
Michael Booth, Denver Post: For those who mourned the final episodes of Brideshead and other installments of the queen's English, Bright Young Things is a diverting evening in the British Isles. Read more
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Fry's sprightly attempt doesn't entirely avoid some of the cliches of drawing-room dramas actually set in drawing rooms, but his instincts are, happily, subversive. Read more
Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: Seeing Bright Young Things is like going to a party that you greatly enjoy even while realizing that you may not remember it. Read more
Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Its brightest stars, and those who get the best lines, are its campy, sexually ambiguous newcomers -- a very funny Michael Sheen as the queeny doper Miles Malpractice, and a wonderfully daffy Fenella Woolgar as Agatha Runcible. Read more
Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: The younger and less familiar performers are more than adequate, but it's the older guard that shines. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: As Agatha might observe, it's all too, too yawn-making. Who are these dreadful people and why on earth must we watch them learning their little moral lessons? Read more
Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: This is a wickedly funny skewering of a prewar London society gone mad with frivolity. Read more
A.O. Scott, New York Times: Stephen Fry's adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies honors its source with vigor and gusto, capturing both Waugh's cheeky humor and his dark, stringent moralism. Read more
Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: If you yearn for a Brit fix, this is your flick. If not, think twice before checking it out. Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Waugh's novel and Fry's movie wisely see that their characters live by spending their comic capital and ending up emotionally overdrawn. Read more
Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: You walk away from Bright Young Things believing that, by and large, Fry has gotten Waugh as well as any filmmaker could be expected to. Read more
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Sizzles with Jazz Age energy, sparkles with champagne wit and roars along like a Grand Prix race car. Read more
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Since no one is playing a rounded character -- just pawns in Waugh's linguistic 'exercise' -- the performances are necessarily mere snapshots haphazardly crammed into a chaotic album. Read more
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Suffers from feeling like it's just pretending to be good when it's obviously much, much happier being bad. But when it's bad, it's very, very good. Read more
Geoff Andrew, Time Out: The 'wit' is leaden and unfunny; the narrative's progress ungainly; the direction stolid. Read more
Derek Elley, Variety: An easy-to-digest slice of literate entertainment for upscale and older auds that lacks a significant emotional undertow to make it a truly involving -- rather than simply voyeuristic -- experience. Read more
Ed Park, Village Voice: Aside from cameos by Jim Broadbent (as the drunken major) and Peter O'Toole (as Nina's reclusive, eccentric father), much of the acting strains for a sophistication that quickly becomes annoying. Read more
Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Exults in its own giddy absurdity. Read more
Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: It's a fits-and-starts kind of thing, advancing three steps to the side for every step forward, possibly more enchanted with the vagaries of its own characters than we in the audience might be. Read more