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Film
A Dickens of a tale
[Photo: United Artists]
The tribulations of the film’s characters end in a wedding, as, from left, Tom Courtenay (Newman Noggs), Anne Hathaway (Madeline Bray), Nicholas Nickleby (Charlie Hunnam) and Mrs. Crummles (Barry Humphries) celebrate the happy ever after. |
By PHILIP BOOTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 9, 2003
Nicholas Nickleby gets another outing on film, this one shorter and livelier than its predecessors and abetted by a stellar cast.
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Sure, Charles Dickens' sagas of pitiable orphans, good-hearted cripples, cruel teachers, secret family lineages, saintly protagonists and sudden reversals of fortune tend to wallow in sentimentality and strive hard to impart the most obvious moral lessons.
But plenty of readers, in Victorian times and now, are suckers for that sort of grand, finely detailed -- if simplistic -- storytelling, as demonstrated by the continuing popularity of A Christmas Carol and Dickens' other works as English-course staples and source material for stage, television and movie productions.
The latest adaptation of Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is written and directed by Douglas McGrath, who was responsible for a smart and appropriately genteel 1996 take on Jane Austen's Emma. It may be a bit weak on the top line, with a merely amiable performance by handsome Charlie Hunnam (Queer as Folk) in the lead role.
But the supporting cast, including Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Christopher Plummer, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming, Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson and Barry Humphries (a.k.a. Dame Edna), is to die for, perhaps 2002's best movie ensemble. These actors vividly bring the grand old tale to life.
McGrath, who also directed Company Man (2000), successfully keeps this version of the 19th century story edgy, spiked with good humor and relatively lively, rather than going for the grand, processional approach taken by a nine-hour Royal Shakespeare Company version in 1980 and by a British miniseries three years ago.
McGrath necessarily chops Nicholas Nickleby down to size, excising large portions of Dickens' third novel, first published as a serial beginning in March 1838.
So it's just the facts, beginning with these: Nicholas, 19; his younger sister, Kate (Romola Garai), and their mother (Stella Gonet), previously content in their modest country home, have been left penniless by the death, from "heartbreak," of the elder Nicholas Nickleby.
The three travel to London with heavy hearts but lifted by the hope that uncle Ralph Nickleby (Plummer, here the personification of greed and evil), will offer a solution to their financial woes. At first, he appears to do just such a good deed, securing a position for Nicholas at a boarding school for boys.
Dotheboys Hall, though, turns out to be a horribly bleak house of horrors, run by a sadistic headmaster (Broadbent, also terrific in Gangs of New York) and his like-minded wife (Stevenson). The couple, two of Dickens' creepiest human specimens, are particularly rough on the crippled Smike (Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot). Smike, frightened but persevering, is befriended by Nicholas.
Meanwhile, back in London, treacherous Ralph attempts to turn his niece into a plaything for an old buddy and business client (Edward Fox). She resists but not before suffering the embarrassment of the crusty old man's amorous advances.
The entertainment value of all these characters, and of Nicholas' journey from fearful, passive boy to young man of decisive action, is augmented by the rambunctious tomfoolery of the Crummles Theater Company, a footloose troupe of performers led by Lane, Humphries and Cumming, all accentuating the campy. They're so amusing that they probably deserve a sitcom. Maybe not, but we were sad to see Nicholas say goodbye to his new friends.
Nicholas Nickleby
- Grade: B+
- Director: Douglas McGrath
- Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Jamie Bell, Nathan Lane, Christopher Plummer, Jim Broadbent, Anne Hathaway, Tom Courtenay, Alan Cumming, Edward Fox, Romola Garai, Barry Humphries, Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson
- Screenplay: Douglas McGrath, adapted from the Dickens novel
- Rating: PG; violence, child endangerment
- Running time: 126 min.
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