Noël Coward is given a hopelessly musty disinterment, writes Donald Clarke

EASY VIRTUE **

Directed by Stephan Elliott. Starring Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas 12A cert, gen release, 93 min

FILM-MAKERS very rarely disinter the plays of Noël Coward these days. Here's why. During one characteristically uproarious scene from Easy Virtue, the male lead, a confirmed country dweller, is urged to take up residence in London. "Where?" he asks incredulously. "Chalk Farm or Saint Martin-in-the-Fields." Laugh? I nearly inhaled my monocle.

Such gruesomely dated jokes - declaimed by the cast in the manner of town criers - litter this nice-looking, decently acted but ultimately pointless adaptation of a Coward hit from 1926. Easy Virtue(which, bizarrely, was previously filmed by a callow young Alfred Hitchcock in 1928) stars Jessica Biel as Larita, a young American widow, who marries John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), an upper-class English gent, and allows herself to be transported to the family pile for bad food and country sports.

You hardly need to be told that Kristin Scott Thomas plays the senior Mrs Whittaker, or that the bitter old prune disapproves of her son's impetuous marriage. (Though she is kind enough not to mention that the bride has the shoulders of a linebacker.) As the weeks progress and Larita introduces the household to the 20th century, Mummy makes efforts to prise the couple apart.

Stephan Elliott, director of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, appears to have only limited confidence in his source material. For most of its duration, Easy Virtueplays like a respectful tribute to a venerable institution, but, every now and then, an unwelcome globule of quasi- modernity splatters onto the screen.

Colin Firth, whose Mr Whittaker is, for all intents and purposes, Lord Marchmain from Brideshead Revisited, sulks and mutters in a manner that would have appalled the crisp Coward, while the reliably wooden Biel speaks largely in anachronisms.

Such inconsistencies of tone are, perhaps, forgivable, but Elliott's attempts to "jazz up" (as the kids say) the soundtrack tend towards the embarrassing. Listening to the faux-Coward versions of such poptabulous hits as (oh dear) Car Washand (oh dear, oh dear) Sex Bomb, one imagines a trendy vicar trying to interest youths in Christ by singing Kumbayaat them. The Noël Coward revival begins and ends here.