Ode on a Grecian URL

Chances are, if you've heard of The Importance of Being Earnest at all you've heard of it in connection to 2002 adaptation with Rupert Everett and Colin Firth in the title role. This is generally considered to be a Bad Adaptation, with its ridiculous implications about Algernon's debt and some roles filled for the sake of celebrity rather than comic intelligence. (To be fair, the director - Oliver Parker - did a perfectly respectable, celebrity-drenched version of Wilde's least-read play, An Ideal Husband, in 1999.)

The Good Adaptation was releasted in 1952. I have to confess that I don't recognize most of the actors' names, other than that of Michael Redgrave (famous mostly, I think, for fathering particularly competent actors) - but with that lack of celebrity seems to have come enormous comic genius. I have not, to this day, found a movie quite as funny as this version of Earnest (possible exception: Clueless).

Anyhow, if you find yourself particularly eager for an excuse to procrastinate in the next couple weeks, consider renting the '52 Earnest: you won't be disappointed.

...and if you do want to be disappointed, there's always the 1994 TV miniseries of Middlemarch, which I'm told is just wretched. (However, it stars Colin Firth's little brother as Fred Vincy, which must be amusing.)