You'd have thought the first film to bear the Ealing Studios logo in more than 40 years would have been more challenging than a mere adaptation.

It's not that there's anything wrong with this... but in its heyday the old west London studio dazzled with such groundbreaking comedies as The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob.

Parker's take on Oscar Wilde's 1893 play is respectful - too respectful - with the casting comfortably risk-free.

Firth reprises his smouldering Darcy routine as Jack Worthing, the country bachelor who enjoys a secret life as his fictitious brother, Earnest, in London's naughtier drinking dens.

Everett brings just the right amount of insouciance to Jack's partner-in-crime, Algy Moncrieff, while Judi Dench is a frighteningly obvious choice for Lady Bracknell.

The female characters are the greatest risk - Americans O'Connor and Witherspoon play rebellious aristo, Gwendolen Fairfax (she gets a tattoo on her bum), and Jack's slightly spacey niece, Cecily Cardew, without a hint of Yankee twang.

Also on hand with textbook performances are Tom Wilkinson as Rev Canon Chasuble and Anna Massey as the straight-laced Miss Prism.

And this is the problem - everything is so reverential. Wilde's barbed witticisms still have the power to sting and his vision remains relevant.

So why didn't the film-makers ditch the period costumes and try something a little more ambitious, in the same way Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been so successfully updated?

Instead, we're left with a tepid romantic drama - lots of country house drawing rooms, coach and fours and alarming headwear - but little passion.

Great lines - "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train" - are delivered in awe instead of relish.

What we end up with is the sort of warmed-up costume drama the BBC used to knock out in its sleep every autumn instead of the reinvention of a great play.

Tim Evans