Evelyn Waugh lived when young aristos, offspring of new money and a wash of bohemian artists lived the good life at breakneck speed, in their own tightly-knit, ruthless society of parties, fancy dress, flippancy and banned substances while the rest of the decent world looked on in appalled fascination. Not entirely unlike today.
Waugh watched friends flounder and drown in the shallow world they had created and wrote a novel about it all. 'Vile Bodies' is slick, satirical and utterly savage, ending with the darlings of the jazz age standing abandoned in lonely fields of war.
Bringing this to screen was a pet project of Fry's for some years and he makes it his directorial debut. He certainly has the wit, the education and the deftness of touch to realise it, but what he lacks, ultimately, is the stomach.
The change in the title is a giveaway. Instead of 'Vile Bodies', we have "Bright Young Things". In its' brighter moments, the film plays brilliantly and Fry's eye for detail is perfect; the music fast and shrill; the costumes opulent; the characters scathingly sarcastic, immaculately turned out and deliberately eccentric. The lovingly painted details all become a delicious whirl, with the pounding rhythm of the age spilling off the screen into the cinema.
The trouble comes in looking for the depth. Waugh's characters were never very likeable and it didn't matter much, but Stephen Fry - nice man that he is - wants us to care about them and their fate. The problem is that the whole thing has to be changed rather a lot for that to happen, and the script doesn't quite run to it.
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While we've been enjoying the view and playing 'spot the cameo', it is left mainly to chemistry to win our sympathy for the two leads, struggling writer Adam (Campbell Moore) and young bohemian nob Nina (Mortimer), trying to raise enough money to marry without missing any good parties.
As the supporting characters fall by the wayside, some abandoned quite abruptly, we're left stranded with Adam and Nina and their increasingly genuine problems, but they haven't been given enough wit for us to find them enaging or enough depth to find them endearing. And so the final act - which should be filled with emotional payoff - begins to drag. Not that the cast aren't trying: indeed Mortimer is practically bursting blood vessels to be vulnerably fey, yet the sudden pat ending still falls somewhat flat.
Basically, Fry's film tries not to be as hard as the book so that the hardness - when it does come - feels out of place. It doesn't have the frantic, frothy warmth of a Jazz age romp, but it also lacks the cruel, sharp depth of a great satirical drama.
So, really you could just decide which one you want and either catch a re-run of Fry and Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster or stay in and read Waugh's original novel.
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