Greg's review of "Brideshead Revisited"

Let's just get this out of the way: I am a huge Emma Thompson fan ...huge. So her presence in "Brideshead Revisited"{ was alone worth the price of admission. I also am quite fond of leading man Matthew Goode.

I've seen the classic TV miniseries adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel which starred Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews and and this movie version just doesn't compare. So much of the material had to be compressed to feature-length 135-minutes. And yet, it still seemed to drag on a bit in a way that the miniseries never did.

The drama, set in pre-WWII, tells the story of Charles Ryder (Goode) who becomes entranced with the Marchmain family and their grand estate, Brideshead. He becomes close to gay schoolmate Sebastian (Ben Whishaw) who is in love with him. But Charles falls in love with Sebastian's sister Julia (Hayley Atwell) and it all goes downhill - for the brother - from there.

Sebastian is initially so charming and fun and the two men have idyllic times together in what is a very romantic, but non-sexual, friendship. But Sebastian is an alcoholic whose Catholic mother (Thompson) pushes all his buttons to make him feel guilty and self-loathing. To see him become so destructive because of his broken heart and his domineering mother is sad and it made me feel badly. It reminded me of the days when all movies with gay characters ended tragically and I don't so much enjoy being taken there anymore.

But that's the novel, that's the story. Once Sebastian is all but out of the story and it focuses on Charlies and Julia, I kinda lost interest. I missed Sebastian's spirit even though Atwell and Goode are very appealing in their roles.

Out of four stars, I give "Brideshead" 2.5 stars. (**1/2)

Here is the film's trailer: