Develiker
terrible... so disappointed.
Ogosmith
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
pointyfilippa
The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.
Gabrielka214
Where to start? First I'd like to warn you - do NOT let yourself mislead by the rather low rating of the movie, it deserves 8 out of 10 at least. (I really can not imagine what kind of people could rate this one less than 8.)The acting was just AWESOME! Yes, excellent and awesome. I'd really like to accentuate Colin Firth's portrayal as Lord Henry Wotton. I haven't liked Firth's acting much so far, but this has completely changed my opinion about him as an actor. Henry Wotton, the lord who teaches yet innocent Dorian how to enjoy life in bedding every woman (or man), in drinking, smoking, in being arrogant etc. Yes, Firth has captured that better than any actor would ever have.The next excellent portrayal is from the main character himself, Dorian Gray. Ben Barnes has showed us his real TALENT, and I wish him a great acting career in future. How he portrayed Dorian was just wondrous. Dorian's changing throughout the movie from the young innocent boy, to the depraved arrogant man and at the end a suffering creature of a man, whose sins come back to him to torture him inside himself. Excellent, you could just see how the character changes, and you could see that clearly only thanks to Ben Barnes's portrayal.The actors who portrayed the minor characters also did not disappoint, far from it. I'd like to highlight the acting of Ben Chaplin (as Basil Hallward, the painter) and Rebecca Hall (as Emily Wotton, daughter of Lord Henry Wotton).The sceneries, surroundings, furniture, costumes, manners of the high society people were made EXACTLY to match the touch of 19th century, when the story takes place in.It's evident from the beginning that the director Oliver Parker, producers, costume designers, music department...foreshorten, the whole crew did their job perfectly and definitely DID NOT huddle the job through.As for the music, there is always a touch of mystery tones, every time the portrait is mentioned, that makes your skin goose flesh.A masterpiece of a movie and of an adaptation (as sometimes it happen, we are not pleased by the adaptations of our favorite books), but this is definitely NOT the case.I highly recommend to watch it and have rated it highly with 10 out of 10, because the movie deserves this rating.Like my review or not, I can say for myself, I LOVED this movie.
sandymagics
I love The Picture of Dorian Gray, I love Colin Firth, I love Oscar Wilde. But I literally hate this movie. I'm wondering if the producer actually read the book or he just get this idea from somebody else and thought "Changing picture? Cool!". He changed every single details, and those details are so important to build this story. All I got from this movie was a beautiful young man who wanted to be beautiful forever, nothing else. I even didn't see his struggle or regret or worried or any complicated thing at all. His feeling was very deep. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a great book, one of my favourites. And I'm sorry, this movie is like a joke.
lillylazuli
Boy, do I regret staying up late to watch this!! Gratuitous sex scenes were laughable and annoying. Honestly, I cannot add anything new that others haven't covered in their reviews of this (bad) film. And the only reason I'm writing more than two lines - the concluding sentence - is because IMBDb has a minimum of 10 text lines for submission.Colin Firth was passable, and the reason for giving this one star. Honesty, I'm struggling to think of anything good about the film to fill up the required minimum text.... set design...All I will say is just go straight to the original film of 1945, The Picture of Dorian Gray; do not pause, do not even consider watching this remake.
DoomDealer
Dorian Gray is the sort of film that receives a lot of hype at its release, including the promising new acting talent, and then quickly vanishes into obscurity, in this case taking the 'promising new acting talent' with it, never to be seen again.Both, the film and Ben Barnes, clearly failed to live up to people's expectations. Nothing against Ben Barnes personally, he may be a good actor but talented is something else. Good looks just aren't enough. I don't want to go into too much detail here about how it's not the most faithful adaptation of the novel, etc., but watching Dorian Gray you get the impression they were trying to come up with a fresh interpretation of Oscar Wilde's famous novel, but didn't quite know how to go about it.The one thing keeping this film from being a total let-down is Colin Firth (no surprises there), although it has to be said that his performance is a bit more lacklustre than we're used to. Still, he hopelessly out-acts everybody, most of all Ben Barnes. The kid just doesn't stand a chance. Colin Firth has the only script worth mentioning, although his character's pretentious one-liners do start to grate half-way though the film. Other than Firth there is nothing in or about this film that stands out, or makes it a worthwhile exercise.In a nutshell: it's bland, it's boring and it does test your patience on a few occasions. Dorian Gray is not the kind of film you should have seen at some point in your life. If you have, chances are you'll have liked it, but are in no rush to see it again any time in the foreseeable future ... or, indeed, ever. It's the kind of film you want to watch relaxing on an evening, without having to think too much, and then feeling afterwards that you should've watched something else instead. It leaves you strangely dissatisfied.Worth a look but ultimately leaves you wondering, 'why did they bother?'
