50
A tedious picture, redeemed in part by Tom Wilkinson's performance as Tuppy--he's the sole cast member who doesn't give birth to every epigram--and by the hats.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
Has a script that plays more like a period romancer studded with occasional Wilde-isms and gets uneven treatment from a mixed Anglo-American cast.
40
Stephen Campbell Moore is miserably out of his depth as the playboy trying to tempt Scarlett, leaving poor Tom Wilkinson to sound a lone note of sophisticated intelligence.
75
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
The movie succeeds because screenwriter Howard Himelstein keeps Wilde's best lines intact and the actors speak the words with practiced confidence.
60
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
Pleasant and undemanding, all the more so whenever Tom Wilkinson's on-screen as a possible Erlynne suitor, the movie miscasts Hunt as the pragmatic seductress.
50
The trick to staging Wilde is to hint at the gravity beneath the witticisms. A Good Woman barely even gets the witticisms out, though it does contain Wilde's line about people being either tedious or charming.
33
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
British director Mike Barker and magpie New York screenwriter Howard Himelstein, have taken "Lady Windermere's Fan" - Wilde's first big stage success, written in 1892 - and pulped it senseless in the name of puttin' on the charm.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
While screenwriter Howard Himelstein and director Mike Barker have done a workable job of drawing the Wilde social satire out of the drawing room, the film never quite manages to travel at the same buoyant velocity as the acerbic wit.
75
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
Wilkinson artfully deepens a character who in Wilde's original play was rather boobish. It's a marvelous performance in a pretty good film.
50
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Hunt's flat delivery is mercilessly cruel to Wilde's delicious epigrams. That sound you hear is Oscar spinning madly in his grave.