Shines like a freshly minted coin in Oliver Parker's adaptation.

It's a movie of uncommon eloquence and elegance, acted by a truly gifted cast.

Makes the translation with all its wit, incisive dialogue and eccentric characters intact, and then some.

What shakes the dust off this period piece is the vibrant acting.

Parker has shaped the play to make it more film-friendly and relevant, but he has done so with such subtlety you would have to be a Wilde authority even to notice.

Parker stays with and even streamlines Wilde's clever manipulations of betrayals and lies and plots and counterplots. Yet the film never feels stagy.

It all seems calculated to churn up excitement, a promise that there's lots of dazzle, glamour and intrigue to come. An Ideal Husband actually does deliver all those things, but mostly in a pleasurably understated way -- no need for the noisy signals.

It still sounds pretty fresh: politicians scratching backs, loose ladies threatening to talk, careers balanced tremulously on the line

The political, social, and linguistic adjustments Parker makes to this hugely entertaining Husband give it fresh relevance without betraying the original.

The two leading men, Northam and Everett, are smooth and charming.

Our familiarity with the actors, and their comfort in this period setting, lend the piece an unexpected air of naturalism.

The only problem I was faced with was trying to understand what exactly it was that I enjoyed, and how this movie differed from the play I'd read.

We are amused. We are not sputtering into our teacups, but we are chortling lightly.

His film is hardly memorable, but it's amusing enough for two hours, and it never panders or cloys.