 Reaction by the critics to the new Cole Porter biography/musical De-Lovely resembles the title to one of Porter's best-loved shows -- Anything Goes. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe observes that while the thought of Porter's music being sung by the likes of Elvis Costello and Sheryl Crow "sounds like a hideous idea," the movie actually "turns out to be thoughtful, creative, and generally worthy of its subject, with sins that are more of ambition and miscalculation than of execution." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times awards the film 3 1/2 stars and praises the performances of Kevin Kline as Porter and Ashley Judd as his wife, Linda Lee. Kline he says, "is ideally cast ... elegant, witty, always onstage, brave in the face of society and his own pain." As for Judd, he remarks, "Who might have know [she] would be so nuanced as Linda Lee?" Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News expresses some minor reservations about the film, but then remarks that overall, "De-Lovely has much de-loveliness about it. There are terrific performances from Kline and Judd, some breathtaking staging and production design, and, of course, some of the best music and lyrics of the 20th century." But Stephen Holden writes in the New York Times that the film is "lifeless and drained of genuine joie de vivre" and while he writes that Kline "can surmount any disaster," Judd, he contends, "Is clueless as to style. She seems to imagine that tilting her chin up to snob level, narrowing her eyes and maintaining precise elocution is all it takes to evoke class." Megan Lehmann in the New York Post writes that "after a fizzy beginning, De-Lovely withers and wanes, becoming a listless trudge through a life -- and ultimately doing an injustice to a complex man and his enchanting, immortal songbook." John Anderson in Newsday calls it a "De-bacle;" Manohla Dargis in the Los Angeles Times, "de-lousy;" and Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail says that it "isn't d'awful, but it's pretty damn close. ... better than a root canal, marginally superior to Gigli, but bad enough." |
