Product: Beau Brummell - This Charming Man (2006)
Rating: 1.0
REGENCY RIDICULOUSNESS
I hate when historical dramatizations treat facts in so frivolously fictitious a fashion that one ends up wondering why the thing was ever made. Why invent when any given reality is ever so more precious?I don't know all that much about Brummell (and learned very little about him in this flick), but I do about Byron. To perfidiously suggest that Lord Byron played a large part in bringing Brummell down is what is truly scandalous in this silly telling. Scrope Davis, Byron's life-long friend, was a crony of Brummell's - but Byron's interplay with Brummell is marginal, if even that. Yet even beyond the slanderous suggestions of Byron's dissolute and desultory effects on this biopic's supposedly charming hero, there is the matter of Matthew Rhys attempting to step into Byron's boots, one of which was fashioned for a lame leg. Simply put, if the historical Lord Byron was anything at all like the one portrayed in this film, no women would have swooned and fainted when he entered a room (and if they had, it would have been out of fright!), nor would they have scrambled across continents to "unphilosophize" him. Unlike the actual Byron who was, according to one of his innumerable lovers, famously judged "mad, bad and dangerous to know" - Rhys is, well, just "bad." And NOT in a "good" way! It hardly helps matters that he looks more like a cross twixt the young Steven Spielberg and the young Barbra Streisand than one of the most beautiful faces of the day.But apart from Byron, if one knew hardly anything whatsoever about Beau Brummel, about a quarter way in one might be wondering why in the world they were watching this film. It is minimal to an excessive degree. And apart from the Spartan script, there is a truly threadbare feel to this entire undertaking. The whole story is alloted a few cramped sets - and no sense of the true style of the era is conveyed. I also understand that the modernistic music score is supposed to hint at Brummell's futuristic sense of style and all ("the dashing designer of modern dress - and disgrace") it says on the DVD cover - yet the music isn't great - it merely grates. And even though people came from far and wide to watch our fashion-plate hero dress, I highly doubt if he permitted them to watch him attire himself from a ballsy state of complete nudity.In short, I wasted money on this one, money I could have placed on a number at the nearest gaming table.