De-Lovely

De-Lovely Review

Boy but does Hollywood love its musical biopics at the moment. Kevin Spacey's just wrapped his rendition of crooner Bobby Darin's life, Joaquin Phoenix is currently in front of the camera as Johnny Cash but it's Kevin Kline who's got in there first with this hugely respectful portrait of famous composer Cole Porter.

We kick off the story of the tuneful chap's life with Kline all bewrinkled and bald as the dying musician sitting in front of his grand piano. Jonathan Pryce's ghost-like 'director' then enters the room, magics the old man off to an empty theatre and proceeds to reconstruct his life from his first meeting with his wife Linda Lee (Ashley Judd) in 1920s Paris, to his huge musical success helped in no small part by his long, rather unusual marriage which survived both illness and Porter's homosexuality. And musical haters, beware; it's a narrative studded with the man's greatest songs warbled by the unlikeliest of modern stars.

Because for the price of your ticket you not only get Kline and Judd crooning away but also the likes of Robbie Williams, Alanis Morrisette, a very impressive Elvis Costello and a not so tuneful Lemar belting out a Porter tune or two.

Unfortunately, director Irwin Winkler fails to link such numbers with anything like the grace of Porter's tunes and the result is a highly unconvincing melodrama that seems to consist almost entirely of Kline and Judd making moon eyes at each other. Dreary, soporific and remarkably undramatic, "De-lovely" is anything but delightful.