Search: Starring Rupert Everett

The performances are rapier sharp

It is a red-blooded, beautiful and brilliant fantasy film, as quintessentially English as Wallace & Gromit.

Passably entertaining as long as you haven't seen any other films.

A mixed bag, as while Everett the actor masterfully evokes the mournful mix of decadence and decay of the last years of Wilde, Everett the filmmaker is, like so many before him, too much in love with the brilliant old rogue for his own good.

It's rare to see a film that is at once so playful and so openly political.

But the real disappointment is Everett, who gives a lazy performance, as if he knows he can do this backwards and simply can't be bothered.

Supremely silly and really quite inventive.

Alas, what we see does not meet its match in what we hear.

Even Banderas' character feels like a cheap knock-off who is not fit to polish the boots of Puss.

This is one of those films where you wait for someone to fall off a horse.

Overall, the film doesn't quite achieve the level of dramatic tension it should.

Thomas Ropelewski's script isn't sharp enough and Bratt's character is depressingly phoney.

Even at its most epic there's something lacklustre about it all, as if the whole thing were being printed in ink-saving mode.

Lacks a sense of danger

The film runs deeper than passion's cruel barb.

As the dashing assassin Puss in Boots, Antonio Banderas is perfectly cast, and there is not one moment of his performance which is not worth watching.

The script, like Shrek, is flabby and going to seed.

A really enjoyable yarn in the Princess Bride mold, told with panache.

It feels alienated by the nature of its concerns, as if locked in a fancy dress trunk.

Everett almost single-handedly sustains the film, thanks to a nicely pitched turn as the headmistress with a heart.

To Kill a King features a career-best performance by Rupert Everett as King Charles I.

The Thornberrys are a cartoon, of course. Their animation is less important than their sense of humour.

Each story has to it a kernel of interestingness, some more than others. But I wasn’t convinced they all belonged in the same world.