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'A Good Woman' makes a not-so-good movie
by Eleanor Ringel Gillespie

Let's say you're going to make a movie with Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson in it. Which one would you cast as an irresistible seductress? Well, director Mike Barker cast Hunt, which is a little like casting Josh Hartnett over Russell Crowe in a remake of "A Streetcar Named Desire." An adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan," "A Good Woman" replaces the play's stiff late-19th-century London drawing rooms with the sunny Amalfi coast of the 1930s. If you tire of the barrage of bon mots, you can always admire the Mediterranean scenery. Read the full review

TO SUM UP
A young couple's marriage is put in jeopardy by high-society gossip of a blossoming affair. Robert Windermere is accused with providing a secret allowance for Mrs. Erlynne, a vampish older woman of ill repute, while his wife Meg courts the attention of Lord Darlington, a notorious playboy.

FILM FACTS ...

Lions Gate Films

'A Good Woman'

Director: Mike Barker
Starring: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Mark Umbers
Run time: 93 minutes
Release date: Feb. 3, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for thematic material, sensuality and language.
See showtimes

On the web
Official movie site

READ THE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: C+
"Johansson ... comes off as stilted, showing little of the finesse she brought to her role in "Match Point." And those simply aren't the lips of a naive ingenue."

Read the full review

Austin American-Statesman: 2 of 5 stars
"... decorated with so many of Wilde's immortal epigrams, amazingly witty nuggets of social insight, that viewers might feel they're reading Cliff's Notes."