IT must have looked so good on paper. Those English dandies Rupert Everett and Colin Firth were re-uniting for the first time since Another Country 18 long winters ago; the cream of young Australia, Frances O'Connor, and young America, Reece Witherspoon, had been invited to become frilly English fillies, and who else but (York's very own) Dame Judi Dench could play that rampant snob Lady Bracknell.

Writer-director Oliver Parker is Wilde about Oscar, as we recall from his previous liaison with the dapper Everett, An Ideal Husband. He can clothe the Wilde thing prettily, but given that his father Sir Peter Parker used to run the railways, Parker junior should know all about timing, or timing going awry, and that is what afflicts this unnecessary, over-elaborate Parker penning of Importance. His editing is worse still, with all the motion sickness of a bad ferry crossing.

Wilde's urbane wit and pithy pricking of English social manners have become too well known, and so Parker turns Wilde's play into a preening catwalk, with a self-regarding turn from Wilde veteran Everett and a look of discomfort from a numbed, dour Firth, who knows he is too old for this fancy-dress party.

Wilde's bounders were young men in their twenties; Parker selects costume-drama old boys Everett, 43 this year, and Firth, a year younger, and then casts their work-shy Jack and Algernon somewhere adrift in their thirties.

Both performances are all too knowing; Witherspoon too affected, O'Connor prettily forgettable, Dench a cut above.

Parker feels the need to garnish an already rich platter, adding a gay undercurrent, saucy tattoos and a hot-air balloon, some serenading singing for Everett and Firth, and fantasy scenes of medieval courtly love.

He re-inserts an oft-skipped scene about settling financial matters, and he deadens scene after scene by turning the epigrammatic dialogue into a minefield.

Wilde's way with words should flow, the wit should charm and dazzle, the drama should dance, but Parker forces every moment, bringing to mind Terry Jones's over-egged The Wind In The Willows. The silly season is traditionally in August; The Importance Of Being Earnest arrives a few days late. Even then, it would have been better never than late.

Updated: 09:08 Friday, September 06, 2002