Could have been so much better

This is a very strange film. In some ways it makes a game attempt to depict a complicated and varied life, but essentially it fails. In many ways it seems like one of the more tiresomely stagey American plays -- cloyingly sentimental in parts, and clumsily acted with hopeless lack of realism.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this film is that it descends into being a luvvie schmooze-fest, with all manner of currently popular singers -- Robbie Williams, Alanis Morrissette, Diana Krall -- mangling Cole Porter's wonderful songs in wildly anachronistic styles: the one extract which is an actual Porter soundtrack, at the beginning of the final titles, underlines the hideous inappropriateness of these efforts.

Pleasant enough entertainment, I suppose, but in many ways a waste of time. Cole Porter deserved much, much more than this thin film.