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'Still, any film that features Colin Firth delivering the line: "There are two girl guides in the shrubbery dear" with barely a smirk must be worth a look.' — Imogen Tilden, Film Unlimited

'Colin Firth, as Coward's acid-stripping alter-ego, has a way with one-liners that's almost indecent. ' — James Christopher, The Times

'Whether changing sly looks and pink gins, sneering at his family or conspiring with the maid, Firth is a delight.'  — Jim Smith, Film Review

'Colin Firth is increasingly hilarious as the cousin who has an objective view of the spiralling lunacy' — BBC

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STARZ! Pictures presents Julie Andrews in the premiere of the never-before-seen original film "Relative Values" on STARZ!(R) Sunday, October 22 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT (with subsequent plays throughout the month).

Based on the 1951 Noel Coward play, "Relative Values" is an English comedic romp about the never-ending struggle between class and classlessness. Set in the early 1950's, the film tells the tale of American movie queen
Miranda Frayle (Tripplehorn) who becomes engaged to snooty aristocrat Nigel, the Earl of Marshwood (Atterton) while aboard a yacht in the south of France. Nigel's impending wedding to the film star distresses his mum, Felicity, the Countess of Marshwood (Andrews) and Miranda's former lover, boozy Hollywood screen idol Don Lucas (Baldwin).  In a fit of jealousy, Lucas quits his latest movie and flies off to the U.K. to woo Miranda away from her English lord. Meanwhile, Moxie (Thompson), Felicity's longtime personal maid, reluctantly reveals that Miranda is her long-estranged younger sister who left the family for the glamour of Hollywood 20 years earlier.  The  class- conscious Marshwoods are now faced with two social embarrassments: Nigel's marriage to the "appalling American" and the social inequity of their servant, Moxie, having to live in the same house as her sister, the soon to be new lady of the manor. Felicity, with the help of her nephew Peter (Firth) and her butler Crestwell (Fry), sets about an ingenious "class" change for Moxie -- just in time for Miranda and Nigel's arrival.  Things seem to get even more complicated for the family when Don arrives later that same day.  However, opportunistic Felicity sees Don as the answer to all their problems.

"A Relative Success"
Film Unlimited, June 23, 2000, by Imogen Tilden
It is almost 50 years since Coward wrote his play, but Eric Styles is the first to bring it to the cinema screen. This is no coincidence. Coward, the master of mannered comedy is one of the stage's undisputed greats, but directors have shied away from transposing his sparkling, stylised and theatrical prose to film. Last year, the centenary of his birth, eight Coward adaptations were reported to be in production; this is the first to see the light of day.

Eric Styles's directorial debut was the humourless and tragic Dreaming of Joseph Lees, and you could be forgiven for approaching his second film with caution. Styles has again teamed again with producer Christopher Milburn, but there the similarities end. Relative Values is a tightly paced and very funny film with barely a second wasted.

Set in the early 50s in a postwar Britain still riddled with class snobbery, the plot is simple. The Earl of Marshwood becomes engaged to glamorous Hollywood actress Miranda Frayle (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and takes her home to meet mummy (Julie Andrews), who is less than happy about the prospect of an actress as the future Lady of the manor. When Moxie, Lady Marshwood's personal maid (Sophie Thompson) reveals the actress is in fact Moxie's sister who ran off to Hollywood 20 years previously, it becomes clear that the marriage cannot go ahead. Miranda is also being pursued by her on- and off-screen former lover, the rakish Don Lucas (William Baldwin), who has realised she is the only woman for him. Lady Marshwood, of course, knows  what is really best for all concerned, and takes matters into her own hands.

The opening montage of film-reel news and newspaper clippings establishes the characters, setting and mood very effectively, and it is with something of a clunk that we move to Marshwood House.

But the pace soon picks up again, and an enjoyable story unfolds. The bright technicolour sets give a nostalgic 50s feel, and although the small budget is sometimes painfully evident—'London airport' looks like something left over from Carry On Abroad—it seems small-minded to carp about it. There are some delightful touches and amusing moments, many provided by the American actors, William Baldwin and Jeanne Tripplehorn, who send themselves up particularly well.

In fact the entire cast is impressive. Colin Firth does an extraordinary turn as Lady Marshwood's mischievous nephew, clearly enjoying himself enormously, Firth's role is reputed to have be on Coward: he just stops short of holding his wrist limply and lisping. Various comic understairs characters add to the familiar landscape of English farce (Stephen Fry does his best sub-Jeeves impression).

It is Sophie Thompson (Emma's younger sister) who steals the show. As Moxie, Lady Marshwood's personal maid, hers is the pivotal role. She maintains the delicate balance between outright farce and Coward's subtle comedy of manners, while managing to convey a complex and anguish character.

If, like me, you can't watch Julie Andrews on screen without expecting her to break into 'My favourite things', it will be a delicious shock to see her playing a character more akin to Lady Bracknell than Mary Poppins. Andrews is majestic and she glides through each scene with the hint of a smug smile on her lips, managing to get everyone dispatched "in time for church", and resisting the temptation to tip her character into broad caricature.

But when all's said and done, this is a film of a play, and its theatrical origins give it at best the feel of a television drama. The cast are a little too smug, and some of the dialogue could have been more rigorously edited—many of the asides sound overly theatrical. 

Styles directs with a light touch. He did well to remember Coward's maxim: "Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners", and keeps the emphasis firmly on the manners. But this comes at the expense of the darker undertones of Coward's script: and Julie Andrews could have done with a bit more steel and a bit less sparkle as she sticks the knife in the back of her son's fiancee.

Still, any film that features Colin Firth delivering the line: "There are two girl guides in the shrubbery dear" with barely a smirk must be worth a look.

"Very Superior Mother"
The Times, June 22, 2000, by James Christopher
Dear, darling Julie Andrews. To some she is the governess we never had. To others she is the nun whom Christopher Plummer had far too much. In Eric Styles's beautifully transposed version of Noel Coward's 1951 comedy, Relative Values, she blooms and blasts into the Mother Superior of leading ladies. The hair is slightly more orange than usual, the face is a blaze of freckles, and the bosom is far ampler than any of us would care to remember.

As the doughty Countess of Marshwood, she is the picture of primness and poise. She has much to disapprove of, and a lot to reveal. Her dashing son, the Earl (Edward Atterton), has fallen for a Hollywood starlet. Worse, he's bringing her home to be his bride. We are never in any doubt about the seriousness of this country-house catastrophe.

Jeanne Tripplehorn's pouting flake looks suspiciously older than Atterton's sixth-form earl. Her career is on the skids. Her famously sozzled former boyfriend (William Baldwin) arrives unannounced. Relatively speaking, she belongs downstairs—-which is precisely where her long-forgotten and stunningly plain sister, Moxie (Sophie Thompson), has resided for 20 years. Social meltdown is on the cards. "If ever a girl needed her bottom smacking, she did," squeals Thompson with a perfect Sidcup accent.

How Styles managed to leap from his first film, Dreaming of Joseph Lees (a ghastly piece of Northern grit), to this champagne charmer defies gravitas. Characters who struggle for oxygen on stage here compete to steal whole scenes. Stephen Fry is spookily perfect as one of life's natural butlers. Colin Firth, as Coward's acid-stripping alter-ego, has a way with one-liners that's almost indecent. But there's no mistaking the star and chief manipulator of this frivolous classic. Andrews could use a lot more steel, and a little less twinkle, when sticking the knife into the luckless Tripplehorn. Perhaps she simply hates the sight of blood.

BBC
No-one ever said that Julie Andrews didn't glow. Or didn't look utterly English. Even now, as she nudges 65, she seems—-even when standing motionless—-to have the jolliest kind of life going on inside her and to represent an England which barely exists any more. It is most fitting, then, that she is the comic cornerstone of Noël Coward's high-jinks frolic, a happy satire on English class set in the 50s. She is the Countess of Marshwood, a woman content with her status and class, but bright enough to see that social change is just over the hill. The Countess is mother to a decent idiot of a son (Edward Atterton), who has brought home a self-serving Hollywood film starlet (Jeanne Tripplehorn) who drools, if not over her fiancé, then certainly over the perks of his position. When the Countess's maid (Sophie Thompson) discovers she is the starlet's sister, the comedy of social mobility is about to explode.

Which it does. Most amusingly indeed. Eric Styles (whose first film was "Dreaming of Joseph Lees") has kept Coward's play evenly balanced between satire and farce, and for every waspish line there is an outbreak of running around and door-slamming. Andrews savours every vowel as the kind of woman who appears to be nice even when being highly offensive, Colin Firth is increasingly hilarious as the cousin who has an objective view of the spiralling lunacy, Stephen Fry is predictably (but no less amusingly) cast as the urbane, intelligent butler, and Sophie Thompson has a grand old time feigning airs and graces. Fun in every frame.

Teletext, June 22, 2000 (3 of 5 stars) by Doug Cooper
At 64, Julie Andrews is still indisputably a star. Her screen presence remains undimmed and her immaculate sophistication and beauty is as radiant as ever. It's great to see her back on the silver screen again and a pity that she's not done more over the years. Her performance is a pleasure to watch, holding together this light-hearted romp from Noel Coward's play. As the matriarch, Lady Felicity, she registers a warm, motherly love to virtually all the characters around her—a calm centre while everyone else gets to cut loose and frolic energetically. Her son (Edward Atterton) has become engaged to the Hollywood movie siren Miranda Frayle (Jeanne Tripplehorn), but a spanner is thrown into the works when her ex-beau, film icon Bud Lucas (William Baldwin) arrives on the scene to win back her heart.

Also on hand is Colin Firth, very amusingly playing against type as the family cousin, Peter, and Sophie Thompson, giving an impeccable comic performance as the family maid. Keeping in the background, but making sure that decorum is maintained at all times is Stephen Fry, first-rate as the head butler. Only Atterton, in fact, lets the side down with a slightly colourless and one-note turn as the impetuous son.

It's sugary entertainment, amiable but disposable. But let's leave all that aside and just be grateful to the film for bringing back a genuine legend in Dame Julie. She reminds you of a Hollywood from a bygone era. More innocent, more glamorous and more glorious.

Shadows on the Wall, June 20, 2000  (3-1/2 of 5 stars)
Based on Noel Coward's play, Relative Values is sunny, cheeky and bright...just like a screwball comedy from the period in which it's set, the early 1950s. Complete with a cheesy, bouncy musical score! As it highlights a collision between starry Hollywood and stiff-upper-lip England, it makes fun of (and warmly affirms) the British class system.

Felicity, the Countess of Marshwood (Andrews), is quietly worried when her son Nigel, the Earl (Atterton), falls for a glamorous movie starlet Miranda Frayle (Tripplehorn), who has recently broken up with her leading man Don (Baldwin). But the big problem is that, on the day Nigel is bringing Miranda home to meet Mummy, Felicity's maid (Thompson) confesses that she's actually Miranda's sister. So Felicity, a cynical cousin (Firth) and the unflappable family butler (Fry) concoct a scheme to salvage some dignity from the situation. And all is going according to plan until Don shows up at the gates...along with platoons of giggling Girl Guides and, of course, the paparazzi.

Dry, witty dialog trickles out delightfully from start to finish, as the cast relishes each word and nuance, eyes sparkling and teeth flashing. While it all feels stilted and starchy, it also gets very funny as the farce cranks up. Fry steals the show completely with a terrifically droll performance—-as only he can pull off (over and over again!). And Thompson gives another clever, subtle comic turn. Since Styles (Dreaming of Joseph Lees) directs the film exactly like a '50s romantic farce, it's an intriguing reminder of just how much film comedy has evolved from simple and unassuming (like this) to sharp, gimmicky and outrageous (like, say, There's Something About Mary). The result is a bit odd—enjoyable and entertaining, inducing smiles and knowing chuckles more than outright laughter. 

The Independent, June 9, 2000, by Carol McDaid
Firth, as the twinkling, camp Cowardy character, manages to sit around smoking, reading the paper and getting the best lines. He chased the part. "I wanted to occupy that position," he says in that well-groomed voice, "as a kind of impish commentator and schemer." The opposite of intense and sullen, in fact.

New Woman,  2 June 2000 (4 stars)
Julie Andrews plays an aristocrat who's peeved when her son introduces a classy Hollywood actress (Jeanne Tripplehorn) as his fiancee. Turns out Jeanne's a sham from Stepney, and the sister of the maid. With the butler (Stephen Fry), his nephew (played hysterically by Colin Firth) and Tripplehorn's ex (William Baldwin), Julie sets about exposing Jeanne as a working-class bint. Great performances make it a compelling comedy that will crease you up. 
 

Film Review (4 out of 5 stars) by Jim Smith
Noël Coward was a playwright, screenwriter, director and songwriter of genius. He wrote camp, bitchy, contrived, furiously-plotted little farces and comedies which more than stand the test of time. Even the most ambling third-rate, am-dram production of say, Private Lives, exudes a wit and verbal sophistication that comes straight from the words the great man put on the page.

The plot is simple English Earl plans to marry Hollywood actress. He takes her to meet his family, while pursued by her ex-lover, chaos ensues. It would be so easy to put the success of adaptation of Coward's Fifties comedy of manners down to The Master himself; easy, but unfair. No the enjoyment to be had from Relative Values (and that enjoyment is considerable) is due to the sympathetic adaptation of the script, the "sunny day" atmosphere of the country retreat setting, and terrific ensemble casting.

It has been an age since Julie Andrews graced the silver screen and she clearly relishes her typical Coward matriarch figure, but brings to her a warmth and yes, light sexiness that works wonderfully. Jeanne Tripplehorn makes me drool, frankly, and as Miranda Frayle, Hollywood superstar, she gives a knock-out self-mocking turn that might rank as her best screen work to date. William Baldwin also demonstrates an admirable ability to laugh at both himself and the cliches of his profession, while hinting at the humanity behind the stardom. In Coward's own role of Peter, Colin Firth, sex symbol and TV icon, is cast against thoroughly against type—and clearly revels in it. Whether changing sly looks and pink gins, sneering at his family or conspiring with the maid, Firth is a delight. The family butler is Stephen Fry. He could do this in his sleep, but no one else could do it so well, so it's nice to have him on board. Everyone else chips in with bright, convincing, appropriate performances and the period detail is exquisite.

As well as examining an older type of film making, Relative Values evokes it. Simply done, charmingly played and clocking in at just under an hour and a half, it's an absolute pleasure.

Empire  * * (fair)
Such was the surefire nature of a Noel Coward play in the salad days of the "talkies" that his sophisticated comedies were snapped up for adaptation even before the first night's greasepaint had dried. However, Relative Values has taken nigh-on half a century to reach the screen, which tends to suggest that it's not on par with its peers. Those still scarred from Eric Styles's previous directorial outing, last year's Dreaming of Joseph Lees, could be forgiven for approaching this with trepidation. But, the opening segment, which establishes both the period and central characters Miranda's and Don's superstar credentials, is done with a brilliantined control that recalls the montage sequences that no selfrespecting 1930s movie was without. Natually things slow down once we reach Blighty, although the action is still taken at a decently farcical clip. Returning to the big screen for the first time since Tchin Tchin (1990), Julie Andrews remains as poised as ever. But she's spent so much time in the oh-so-clever angst-ridden chatfests of her husband, Blake Edwards, that she tends to deliver her lines like an LA luvvie. She banters effectively with man-about-town Colin Firth, but comes off second best to Sophie Thompson, who twitters beautifully as Moxie, the devoted domestic rendered distinctly uncomfortable by her sudden elevation to the peerage. With Stephen Fry and Edward Atterton contributing a second-division Jeeves and Wooster act, the film reaches its quotient of gentle smiles. But such is the precision and polish of the performances that it's obvious everyone is acting, instead of inhabiting their long-gone world. 

Patrick Peters: Any Good? Rigidly adhering to the comedy of manners formula, this is inescapably a filmed play. Quips are tossed off and insults exchanged impeccably. But, with the cast performing like an amateur dramatic troupe, there's far more starch than sparkle on show.

Hotdog (3of 5 stars)
"Based on a Noel Coward stage play, Relative Values is a very British "comedy of manners" that may be deeply unfashionable but benefits from perfect casting and great performances. Set in the fifties, it plays on the class culture clash between two Hollywood stars and an uptight aristocratic family, to create, as Coward would no doubt have put it, " a positive feast of hilarity".  Baldwin is superb as the bigscreen boozehound Don Lucas, Julie Andrews' cool calculating Countess is remarkable and Stephen Fry almost steals the show with his Jeeves-like butler. But it is Sophie Thompson's Moxie who blows them all away as the below stairs maid pretending to be the newly monied lady. It's no "American Pie", but if you like your comedy stylish, sophisticated and as dry as good Martini, then look no further".

Popcorn (2 of 5 stars) by Simon Wardell
In the wake of 'Wilde' and 'An Ideal Husband', an adaptation of Noel Coward—the latter-day standard bearer for Oscar's brand of sophisticated drawing-room comedy—probably seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, no amount of witty repartee or star performances can disguise how dated the whole exercise feels.

Set in an English country house in the 1950s, the film kicks off with family heir Nigel (Edward Atterton) announcing his engagement to Jeanne Tripplehorn's fading Hollywood star, Miranda. This causes a few problems for his mother (Julie Andrews), not only when she discovers that her maid Moxie (fine work from Sophie Thompson) is Miranda's long-lost sister but also with the subsequent arrival of the actress's besotted former lover, film idol Don Lucas William Baldwin).

A series of mightily predictable entanglements and misunderstandings ensue, all wrapped up in Coward's acid but airy prose. There are some nice touches by director Eric Styles, who previously made the little-seen 'Dreaming Of  Joseph Lees'—the entrance of Lucas coincides with the appearance of an escalating number of Girl Guides outside the estate gates, while Miranda's American accent slips tellingly into Cockney during one confrontation.

However, the travails of the landed gentry, even if they are represented by the venerable Miss Julie, do not make for absorbing viewing. And Andrews and Colin Firth, as her Coward-esque nephew, obviously take the whole exercise so lightly that it's asking a bit much for the audience to care either.