De-Lovely
De-Lovely
PG-13 | 02 July 2004 (USA)
De-Lovely Trailers

From Paris to Venice to Broadway to Hollywood, the lives of Cole Porter and his wife, Linda Lee Thomas were never less than glamorous and wildly unconventional. And though Cole's thirst for life strained their marriage, Linda never stopped being his muse, inspiring some of the greatest songs of the twentieth century.

Reviews
Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!
GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.
KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Kirpianuscus the charm of this movie is its basic virtue.because it is one of biographic films who not presents a life but a state. bitter, sweet, seductive, heavy, nice. without a real clear definition but ideal for portrait of a great artist and his time, and his fights, and a sort of romanticism who seduce but, in same measure, is far to give a legend/myth/hero to the public. sure, Kline and Judd are the keys for this film who is almost only a honest confession about a man and about the levels of his career. but it represents more than a beautiful film. because it gives the flavor of a lost time in the right way.
TheLittleSongbird To be honest, while all the criticisms are very understandable, and I actually agree with them, I was expecting something worse than how De-Lovely turned out. It is a long way from a great film, or even a good film, but to me it wasn't terrible.De-Lovely does have a good deal of good things. The film looks fabulous, the period clothes are just exquisite, there was evidently a great deal of care and attention to detail in the scenery and settings and the cinematography sparkles. The ageing make-up is very well done as well. Cole Porter's songs are wonderful, the best of them gold standard classics and while some of the songs deserved better treatment than they got others are very well performed, the best being John Barrowman's Night and Day, Natalie Cole's beautiful Every Time We Say Goodbye, Alanis Morissette's Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love and Kevin Kline's sublime So in Love. The first half is suitably witty and sophisticated, the aftermath of the riding accident is movingly done(an improvement over how it was depicted in Night and Day with Cary Grant, which I found superior actually despite its flaws) and Porter and Linda's relationship is well-depicted. Ashley Judd plays Linda with dignity and Jonathan Pryce enjoys himself but other than the production values the best thing about the film was Kevin Kline's brilliant performance as Porter, a witty, charming and moving performance.Unfortunately, De-Lovely takes a nose-dive in the second half, feeling like a different film altogether, the pacing becomes leaden and the narrative becomes very jumpy with some ideas touched upon and not explored enough. Due to the gross number of inaccuracies and the change in chronological order of the songs and events makes the storytelling hard to follow. There is some really sloppy editing, and in general Irwin Winkler's very stylised direction becomes increasingly self-indulgent and manages to be hectic and ponderous. In the second half the wit and sophistication the first half had is completely lost with a lot of the writing becoming incredibly trite and awkward, Porter's sexuality is much too overt(the opposite effect of the glossed over effect Night and Day had) and the film overall is lacking in emotional connection narratively and stylistically. Too many of the song renditions don't work, Elvis Costello's singing style is ill-suited to Let's Misbehave(he also does little with the wit of the lyrics), Lemar is completely out of place and worst of all Begin the Beguine is execrably arranged and performed to the point of being unrecognisable, with tuneless and emotionless singing from Sheryl Crow, sounding like she isn't even listening to the music.In conclusion, not that bad but should have been much better. 5/10 Bethany Cox
dwatkins6886 I have never ever been a fan of Broadway musical type movies, until I stumbled on this movie. I also never knew anything about Cole Porter or his life, much less that he wrote many of the very popular tunes we've heard.I believe Kevin Kline performed amazingly in this movie, along with Ashley Judd's performance. I believe they are the reason I enjoyed it so very much. The cameo performances in the film were so fabulous to enjoy with the various artists.Mr. Kline & Ms. Judd, thank you for bringing Cole Porter's life more into the light and for me to enjoy. Thanks to you, I now have another one of those FANTASTIC movies that I can put into the DVD player at any time and watch beginning to end, no matter how many times I've watched it. BRILLIANT PERFORMANCE!!!!
mso88 Brilliantly staged, superb performances by Kevin Kline and Jon Pryce, and those great Cole Porter songs (the reason for buying the DVD). And yet this film is profoundly strange, lurching between musical and biopic, as ambivalent as Porter's sexual orientation. Screenwriter Jay Cock's tone-deaf dialogue saps critically-needed energy from the film while characters stop the action to deliver formal speeches rather fire clever quips from the hip. But what can we expect from a film-critic-turned screenwriter? De Lovely needs more stacatto Hollywood dialogue that matches the style, grace, and elegance of the art direction and cast performances. DeLovely is actually 2 films at war with one another: an elegant, snappy musical versus a dull, literary biopic. And the winner is the musical.