Getting your Firth fix

In honor of Colin Firth winning Best Actor at the Golden Globes on Sunday, I have a treat for you.

And yes, I'm operating here on the certainty that his GG nomination and win were deserved and right, unlike some of the other wacky calls that weirdo Hollywood Foreign Press Association makes. (Jennifer Love Hewitt nominated for Best Actress of anything? Especially for a TV movie where she plays a massage therapist who turns to prostitution to make ends meet, as so awesomely recapped by the Fug Girls?)

But anyway. Back to the point. A couple of years ago a movie called Easy Virtue came out.


I noticed it because it had Colin Firth in it. I read the description and learned that it's about an American woman (played by Jessica Biel) in the 1930s who meets and impulsively marries a Brit (played by Prince Cathhpian) in Monaco and is then taken to England to meet his family on their vast estate. Colin Firth and Kristen Scott-Thomas play the parents.


Kristen Scott-Thomas is the proper English lady who is horrified at her new American (gasp) daughter-in-law with her modern ways and her smoking (double gasp) and her career as a racecar driver (gasp and then fall over dead). She sets out on a campaign to run the floozy off.


Colin Firth plays the shaggy dad who just wants to be left alone to putter in the garage.

My initial thoughts: Meh. If Colin Firth isn't the romantic lead then I don't want to waste my time. Also if he's going to be shaggy and weird. And I don't want to watch a Jessica Biel movie. Also the DVD cover was not that cool yellow one above but this other kind of lame one. So I passed. A week or so ago, though, I saw it on Netflix and decided to give it a try.

Friends, I was so wrong about this movie. Turns out that first of all it's an actual SLA, being based on a play by Noel Coward (which, hi, means that unless some moron rewrote all his dialogue then it should be pretty darn witty). So, yes, witty it is. Jessica Biel did not bug me like I thought she would, and the rest of the cast is great (special mention goes to the butler, who was my favorite). I found that I actually quite enjoyed watching Colin Firth play a sardonic, can't-be-bothered sort of person. He is the only family member who welcomes his son's bride and doesn't look for every opportunity to judge her.

And then?

He finally shaved and this may or may not have happened.


That's all I'm saying.

Posted in: men I love,Sumptuous Literary Adaptations