The Picture of Dorian Gray (2006)

User Rating:

5.2/10   

Director:

Duncan Roy

Writers:

Duncan Roy (adaptation)
Oscar Wilde (novel)

Release Date:

2006 (USA)

Genre:

Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

A contemporary adaptation of Oscar Wilde classic tale of vanity.

Plot Keywords:

Transformation | Contemporary | Romeo And Juliet | Pride | AIDS

Cast

David Gallagher	...	Dorian Gray
Noah Segan	...	Basil Hallward
Christian Camargo	...	Henry Wotton
Aleksa Palladino	...	Sibyl Vane
Michael Godere	...	Gabriel (as Michael Goduti)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Réal Andrews	...	Preacher
Rob Armstrong	...	Pedestrian
Michael Bellisario	...	James Vane
Fern Britton	...	Herself
Wayne Chang	...	Theatre Patron
Jaymie Dornan	...	Young Dorian
Louise Flory	...	Dorian's Crew
J. Teddy Garces	...	Dorians Chauffeur
Grace Garland	...	Lina
Dan Gingert	...	Isaac
Gary Hilborn	...	Chelsea boy
Allison King	...	Dorian's Crew
Ricky Lewis	...	Dorian's Crew
Gregory J. Lucas	...	Dorian's Crew
Sharon Marshall	...	Herself
Pete Mizzo	...	The Waiter
Dmitry Pomirchy	...	Rat Boy
Paul Sado	...	Matt
Alexis Savino	...	Dorian's Crew
Evan Shafran	...	Dorian's Crew
Pamela Shaw	...	Mrs. Vane
Damon Stone	...	Rat Boy
Stelianie Tekmitchov	...	Gallery assistant
Rebecca Wisocky	...	Ursula Wooten
Blake Young-Fountain	...	Announcer
Shawn-Caulin Young	...	Jimmy the Hustler

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Third Rock Films

Trivia:

At one stage, both Marianne Faithfull and Stephen Fry were attached.

Terrible, pretentious mess

Wow what a spectacularly pretentious and boring film. The first act of it is nearly unwatchable and comes off like a bad Calvin Klein "Obsession" ad parody.

I give the film 2 stars instead of 1 because, with a couple notable exceptions, the acting is quite good for this type of movie. Also, I applaud the director for at least trying to be daring. But those are the only compliments I can find for this movie.

I thought that just about everything else in the film failed miserably. The direction was utterly incoherent with only those already very familiar with Oscar Wilde's original story able to piece things together at all in the first half of the film.

The film is unsettling, sometimes presumably intentionally so, because there is nearly constant background noise distracting from the dialog/narrative. Televisions or unseen radios blare out repetitive monologues or inexplicable buzzing sounds can be heard. This aspect could have been worsened by a poor choice of the theater I saw it in where they apparently chose to turn the volume way up so the often mumbled dialog could be heard. Whatever the cause, the background noise was extremely grating. At least the terrible sound mixing would occasionally have the unintended consequence of waking up the bored audience when an inappropriately loud sound would suddenly slap them upside the head. I can see the intention with a buzzing snooze alarm, but when someone setting a glass on a table gives the audience a jolt (and a headache), that is not a good thing.

One of the worst failures of the film itself is the mixing of Wilde's dialog with contemporary dialog. You can certainly take old dialog and modernize everything else about a story very successfully (see "Romeo + Juliet" for one example). And I'm sure there are other movies that mix old and new dialog in a contemporary setting with success. But here you can always tell which lines of dialog were lifted from Wilde because they sound like they came from a much more interesting story. Often times, embarrassingly enough, they are used in a way that suggests the director has misinterpreted their meaning or tried to give them much greater meaning than Wilde intended. This is not helped by jarring and pretentious screens that pop up showing some of the lines of dialog.

So many others have listed other big problems with the film (casual racism, over-reaching and offensive AIDS story) that I won't detail them.

Suffice to say this film is a mess and should be avoided.