Click Above To Buy NOW!

Throughout its 100 plus years in existence, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray has been the inspiration for numerous screen writers, who went on to include elements of the story in their works to cash in, and has even gotten the inevitable film adaptation… apparently, around 19 of them have been made (I wouldn’t count one as Dorian Gray is only a character in The League of Extraordinarily Shitty Gentlemen)… including the one this review is for.

For those of you that have never heard of the novel and don’t know the story, the story is about a handsome young man named Dorian Gray (Ben Barnes of Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian). Upon arriving in London, Dorian is quickly taken under the tutelage of the charismatic Lord Henry Wotton (Colin Firth, Nanny McPhee). Wotton tells Dorian that he should indulge in anything imaginable while he is still young… oh, and he introduces him to a guy named Basil (Ben Chaplin, The Truth About Cats and Dogs). Basil becomes infatuated with Dorian and decides to capture his beauty in a painting. After the unveiling, Dorian pledges that he would give anything, including his soul, to stay the way he is in the picture. As a result of uttering these words, Dorian is able to live this fantastical lifestyle of his without aging. However, because he uttered these words, his portrait ages and also receives any wound that Dorian may get whilst gallivanting about… meaning that by the end of the film, the portrait is of a horrifically scarred old man. There is a bit more to the plot, but that’s all you really need to know.

This particular adaptation is marred by numerous problems that prevent it from being a good film. First and foremost, the movie either has the most idiotic editing known to man or the film’s director, Oliver Parker (The Importance of Being Earnest), thought it was a genius idea to fill his movie with scenes that don’t flow naturally. For example, there is a scene where Dorian is killing a person and in said scene, we have Dorian step towards the victim, followed by him turning back around towards the victim, followed by him raising his hand and then just blood shooting up at him. Now, in any other movie, we would have seen the scene in its entirety… but that isn’t the case here. Here, we have a movie that had either a director or an editor who thought that they would be saving the film by cutting scenes to shit just to shorten the run time… which is mind blowing in itself since this is almost a two hour movie. By doing this, the viewer doesn’t have any attachment to the characters in the film whatsoever and could care less about what happens to them (the only reason I finished the movie was so that I could review it). Who knows, maybe the just really wanted to fuck with people.

The cast of the film is fairly weak. Barnes has the “pretty boy” looks but he is nowhere near leading man caliber. His acting isn’t anything that will win awards, but his performance could have been hurt by the retarded way the film was shot. However, he could have just hoped that his looks would make people forget about his performance. Unfortunately for him, I like vagina, so his looks aren’t going to help him one bit. Colin Firth’s performance, in my opinion, is by far the worst performance of his career. Firth appears to dial in his performance and gives us an extremely annoying character; one who is a nasally sounding hypocrite that makes you cringe every time he opens his mouth.

The 2009 adaptation of Dorian Gray is probably the worst adaptation that I’ve seen. The movie is just full of flaws and pretty frustrating to watch.

Final Synopsis: The film looks pretty, but not even that can save it. Skip it.

Points Lost: -1 for poor direction, -1 for poor editing, -1 Ben Barnes’ performance, -1 for Colin Firth’s performance, -1 for characters you can give two shits about, -1 for pacing issues.

Lesson Learned: Moms and daughters can easily be talked into doing a threesome.

Burning Question: What would you sell your soul for?

Dorian Gray (2009)
4/10

Tags: 2009, based on novel, Ben Barnes, Ben Chaplin, colin firth, drama, latest movie review, Oliver Parker, Oscar Wilde, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Rebecca Hall