Dorian Gray on Blu-ray & DVD (2009)

Dorian Gray details

Formats:	15 DVD, Blu-ray
Starring:	Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Caroline Goodall, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Emilia Fox, Rebecca Hall, Ben Chaplin, Fiona Shaw, Maryam d'Abo, Douglas Henshall
Director:	Oliver Parker
Genres:	Drama - General, Horror, Thriller
Studio:	MOMENTUM PICTURES
Collections:	Multi-coloured Movie Collection, Top 400 All-Time Rentals, Top Horror

Name	Discs
Dorian Gray	15 Feature

DVD Information

Run time:	1 hour 52 minutes
Rental release:	18 Jan 2010
Main languages:	English, English Audio Description

Name	Discs
Dorian Gray	15 Feature

Blu-ray Information

Run time:	1 hour 52 minutes
Rental release:	18 Jan 2010
Main languages:	English
Hearing impaired subtitles:	English

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Most helpful review Dorian Gray

I'm not Wilde about Dorian

By a customer from London , 09 Sep 2009

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS Show review anywayHide

[Highly rated reviewer]

Dorian Gray, the novel, is as detailed an examination of the questions of 'sin' and 'innocence' as you'll find among the vast pile of Victorian tomes that wrestled with the issue. In it Oscar Wilde asked what a man might do if he had no need to fear the consequences of his actions and discovered a terrible answer. It is a genuinely chilling tale, all the more so because of the carefully nuanced way in which Wilde charts Dorian's decline, lingering long over his first step beyond the pale - the betrayal of the young actress Sibyl Vane - to ensure the reader understands the gravity of what he has done. Dorian's transformation is gradual but inevitable, as he is slowly seduced by his untouchable beauty and the power it gives him over others.

That's the novel. The film in contrast seems to have been put together by the same team responsible for the 'Confessions of' series. The audience I watched it with spent much of their time laughing as writer and director found excuses to slip in more and more scenes of naked-breasted 'tarts' frolicking with the eponymous anti-hero in brothels whose gilded sets look to have been nicked from Baz Luhrman's 'Moulin Rouge'. From the crass way the film opens with a scene of murder, through the even crasser equation of Wilde's portrayal of 'spiritual fall' with 'kinky' sex of the kind Madonna used to try to titillate the press with in the 80s, up to the just plain dumb use of the CGIed-up portrait itself, this film manages to throw away the heart of a good novel and replace it with a bit of dim horror-lite for the teen-to-20s market. To quote the book itself, 'It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly'. Sadly, this film is neither beautiful, nor good.
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DO NOT RENT THIS RUBBISH

By a customer , 01 Nov 2012

A terrible film.

Similar to the worst and most tedious of Hammer films but completely lakcing in any of their charm.
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Glad I ignored the previous low ratings

By a customer , 23 Oct 2012

I ordered this DVD before reading the earlier reviews, then thought I'd made a mistake when they were all so bad. Okay, I know that preferences for films are very personal, but I don't see how anyone could have read the book and not thought that this was a good adaptation - it very much got across the schizophrenia and moral decay that Wilde was putting over, and other than the timeframe shifting to WW1 (though I understand why this might have made a better screenplay), it was true to the thrust of the story. Glad I rented it.
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A poor remake of dorian gray

By August7th (16 reviews) , 03 Oct 2012

Dreadful;a waste of a very good cast and not a patch on the original 1945 film.

Endless,predictable sexathons-which are actually very boring-and poor external sets ,which look like cardboard cut outs.

No sense of suspense either I abandoned it after 60 minutes.
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Dorian Slow

By Rhodri80 (9 reviews) , 18 Sep 2012

Poor film. I did not enjoy this and I would never watch it again. Pretty slow and pretty dull. I doubt even women would find it smouldering or interesting.
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Save your time, its a bore.

By positivevibes (8 reviews) , 08 Sep 2012

This was one of my most favourite books. I loved this book from beginning to end and I'm afraid this movie did absolutely no justice to the book and furthermore it is just a bad movie. Its poorly constructed and badly acted. Its a real bore. Read the book and enjoy a great piece of fiction. This is just a waste of time.
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