Waste of time

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The opening scenes of Irwin Winkler's "De-Lovely" are hardly promising: Kevin Kline--in old man's makeup--playing songwriter Cole Porter, being led somewhat reluctantly by a friendly guide through his colorful, extravagant life filled with friends, lovers, and his longtime wife and supporter, Linda (it smacks a bit of Dickens). Still, director Winkler and screenwriter Jay Cocks are able to tell Porter's story in a fluid and interesting fashion, starting about the time he met Linda, the most beautiful divorcée in Paris, in 1919. The musical numbers are interjected subtly--they're either part of a show or rehearsal, a nightclub performance, or a fantasy-twist on the scene in question--giving this biography an aural and visual kick. Kline and Ashley Judd manage to create a very nice rapport as husband and wife, she with failing health and he busy consummating affairs with other men. Their loyalty in friendship is tastefully handled. In fact, the whole movie is tasteful, and this is both pro and con. Porter's homosexuality is pussyfooted around in a playful manner (so as not to discourage heterosexual audiences), yet his fickle sexual nature is only reflected in Linda's ever-increasing dismay. Imagine this picture as directed by someone like Bob Fosse, who may have envisioned Porter's more decadent side with some grit. "De-Lovely" slides on and off the screen, with a blackmail subplot brought up and then forgotten about. It will no doubt charm those in the mood for a non-think, sweetly sentimental tale, though the finale is reminiscent of Fosse's "All That Jazz", and the collection of modern singers (Robbie Williams, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Cow, et al.) give the film an anachronistic bend which seems purely and inexplicably intentional. **1/2 from ****

De-Lovely is excellent. I am pretty surprised that there are no Academy award nominations for it. The sound track is simply wonderful. Cole Porter's life is biographically and aesthetically portrayed by the director. The two leads, Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd, are perfectly cast and perform beyond perfection in it. That this is a mixture of gay and straight relational behavior in the same man is deftly depicted, and represents the period well. The sets and the choreography in many of the song and dance numbers brought me back to brighter times. A few of the singing extras did not quite capture the period perfectly, perhaps (Ms Morissette comes to mind), but the songs are all so wonderful, so that it is easy to forget. The director, Irwin Winkler, had to try to make a biographical tale depicting the music the man created in his lifetime, which he did wonderfully, while all the time giving the leads free reign to portray real human beings who loved each other, while continually pondering who, exactly, they themselves really were. Mr Winkler uses something of an artist's brush to pull this thing off so well. Not an easy task given the hidden (gay) subject matter of Cole Porters other life.

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.

The first time I watched Delovely, I found it annoying. Since then, it's become a movie that I watch regularly, one of my favorites. Why? Well, Kevin Kline's performance strikes me as a labor of love. That helps a lot. Ashley Judd's performance as Linda Porter is more one- dimensional, but she delivers perfect support. But what really draws me to Delovely again and again is the music. I've not been a big Cole Porter fan. I tend to find his rhymes trite, his 'sophistication' doesn't come off for me, and his melodies are too Broadway. But Delovely sold me on song after song. The film contextualizes the songs beautifully, so that their meanings become a little more apparent, and then the singers really deliver! I've noticed that the music in Delovely doesn't seem to review well. I think that must be because reviewers expected more historical authenticity. Instead what they got was contemporary pop stars freely re-interpreting Porter's songs, sometimes against expectation, with resounding success. Elvis Costello turns "Let's Misbehave" into an anthem. Alanis Morisette gives "Let's Do It" bite and energy. Sheryl Crow turns "Begin the Beguine" into a dirge.Long before I saw Delovely, I had a chance to hear Cole Porter on record singing a song or two. I'll never forget my reaction - "so that's how those songs are MEANT to be heard!" I think this was on a tribute album, and it really started my re-appraisal of Porter's music, which I suspect has typically been miss-interpreted. Porter's songs have a lot of emotional darkness in them, that has often been lost in translation. You hear it when Porter sings them, and you hear it in Delovely. It's that dark undertone that makes the rhymes work, makes the humor funny, makes the sparkle sparkle and makes the songs kick. Whoever was the creative force behind Delovely seems to have understood that they weren't just creating the average biopic, that they were reinterpreting a misunderstood artist.And they made the right choice when they asked Kevin Kline to set the tone for the film by singing and playing in a way that caught the dark undertone in Porter's singing and playing. I've never seen Kline rise to the occasion like this. He's always good, of course, but in Delovely, he seems to channel Cole Porter, so that one doesn't consider for a moment whether he looks like Cole Porter, acts like Cole Porter, sounds like Cole Porter, or whether the incidents portrayed are historically accurate. He does something far better. He is Cole Porter. For a night. In a play about Cole Porter.No Oscar for Kline, of course. The truly great performances never get Oscars. No doubt they'll give him a make-up Oscar for some dreary performance in the future. It's what they usually do.I don't know if I'll ever consider Delovely a great movie. I just don't quite accept the artifice in which Porter discusses his life with Gabe in some kind of All That Jazz derived purgatory. I recognize why they did this, and I think it works fairly well, but I can't quite get over the fact that it introduces an extraneous character who never really becomes integral to the story - even if that is sort of the point.Doesn't matter so much though. Above all, I love the music, and most especially, I love Sheryl Crowe's version of Begin the Beguine. Of all the numbers, this is the one that dazzles. Crowe seizes the song and throttles it, combining a wildly over the top Torch Song delivery with a stunningly glitzy and sleazy physical performance, in a dress that is just a little more see-thru than you really want it to be. Sounds terrible, but it works. There could not be a better tribute to Cole Porter's mad alchemy. For me, Crowe's version of Begin the Beguine, however out of step with tradition, is definitive.