The Importance of Being Earnest

Watch Trailer Watch Movie

The Importance of Being Earnest

"Everybody Loves Ernest... But Nobody's Quite Sure Who He Really Is."

2002

1h 37m

6.9(490 votes)

Comedy

Drama

History

Romance

Overview

Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ('Ernest') on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities.

Links & Resources

IMDbView

Social & External

IMDb

Production Companies

Videos & Trailers

1 video

Cast & Crew

15 members

Acting

Rupert Everett

Algernon “Algy” Moncrieff

Acting

Colin Firth

John “Jack” Worthing

Acting

Reese Witherspoon

Cecily Cardew

Acting

Judi Dench

Lady Bracknell

Acting

Tom Wilkinson

Dr. Chasuble

Acting

Frances O'Connor

Gwendolen Fairfax

Acting

Anna Massey

Miss Laetitia Prism

Acting

Edward Fox

Lane

Acting

Patrick Godfrey

Merriman

Acting

Charles Kay

Gribsby

Acting

Marsha Fitzalan

Dowager

Acting

Cyril Shaps

Pew Opener

Acting

Finty Williams

Young Lady Bracknell

Editing

Guy Bensley

Young Lord Bracknell

No Image

Acting

Kiera Chaplin

Girl in Gambling Club

No Image

Similar Movies

6.6

1996

Basquiat

The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.

Movie

8.2

1995

The Usual Suspects

Held in an L.A. interrogation room, Verbal Kint attempts to convince the feds that a mythic crime lord, Keyser Soze, not only exists, but was also responsible for drawing him and his four partners into a multi-million dollar heist that ended with an explosion in San Pedro harbor – leaving few survivors. Verbal lures his interrogators with an incredible story of the crime lord's almost supernatural prowess.

Movie

7.3

1961

Murder She Said

Miss Marple believes she's seen a murder in a passing-by train, yet when the police find no evidence she decides to investigate it on her own.

Movie

7.4

1973

The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob

In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assasins from Slimane's country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who's returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. Adding to the confusion are Pivert's dentist-wife, who thinks her husband is leaving her for another woman, their daughter, who's about to get married, and a Parisian neighborhood filled with people eager to celebrate the return of Rabbi Jacob.

Movie

7.2

1976

The Wing or the Thigh?

Charles Duchemin, a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, is waging a war against fast food entrepreneur Tri- catel to save the French art of cooking. After having agreed to appear on a talk show to show his skills in naming food and wine by taste, he is confronted with two disasters: his son wants to become a clown rather than a restaurant tester and he, the famous Charles Duchemin, has lost his taste!

Movie

6.9

1985

No End

1982, Poland. A translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.

Movie

7.6

1997

Gattaca

Vincent is an all-too-human man who dares to defy a system obsessed with genetic perfection. He is an "In-Valid" who assumes the identity of a member of the genetic elite to pursue his goal of traveling into space with the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation.

Movie

7.2

1993

Mrs. Doubtfire

Loving but irresponsible dad Daniel Hillard, estranged from his exasperated spouse, is crushed by a court order allowing only weekly visits with his kids. When Daniel learns his ex needs a housekeeper, he gets the job -- disguised as a British nanny. Soon he becomes not only his children's best pal but the kind of parent he should have been from the start.

Movie

7.5

1958

The Music Room

An aging, decadent landlord’s passion for music becomes the undoing of his legacy as he sacrifices his wealth in order to compete with the opulent music room of his younger, richer neighbour.

Movie

7.6

2002

Dolls

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

Movie

6.7

1995

Brother of Sleep

In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.

Movie

6.5

2005

Willenbrock

Second-hand car sales man Willenbrock has everything that he could ever wish for. He is married, has two lovers, a cottage in the German city Grünen, and a BMW. Yet one day while at his cottage he gets mugged and his life is drastically changed. Little by little the world he once felt safe in falls apart around him.

Movie

6.0

1987

Blind Date

When bachelor Walter Davis is set up with his sister-in-law's pretty cousin, Nadia Gates, a seemingly average blind date turns into a chaotic night on the town. Walter's brother, Ted, tells him not to let Nadia drink alcohol, but he dismisses the warning and her behaviour gets increasingly wild. Walter and Nadia's numerous incidents are made even worse as her former lover David relentlessly follows them around town.

Movie

6.3

1990

Flashback

A hippie radical, Huey Walker has been a fugitive for decades, accused of a crime that he may not have committed. Finally apprehended, Walker is escorted to trial by uptight 20-something FBI agent John Buckner. While the two seem to be polar opposites, it turns out that Buckner may have more in common with Walker than is initially apparent, a point that is driven home when the pair faces off against a sinister small-town sheriff.

Movie

7.3

1991

La Belle Noiseuse

The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.

Movie

6.6

1997

Life Is All You Get

After he loses his job, his father, and his girlfriend, Jan's life is a shambles. Then suddenly he meets freakish street musician Vera, and a bittersweet romance unfolds...

Movie

6.9

1987

Mannequin

Jonathan Switcher, an unemployed artist, finds a job as an assistant window dresser for a department store. When Jonathan happens upon a beautiful mannequin he previously designed, she springs to life and introduces herself as Emmy, an Egyptian under an ancient spell. Despite interference from the store's devious manager, Jonathan and his mannequin fall in love while creating eye-catching window displays to keep the struggling store in business.

Movie

5.3

2008

Meet Dave

A crew of miniature aliens operate a spaceship that has a human form. While trying to save their planet, the aliens encounter a new problem, as their ship becomes smitten with an Earth woman.

Movie

6.6

1997

Wilde

The story of Oscar Wilde, genius, poet, playwright and the First Modern Man. The self-realisation of his homosexuality caused Wilde enormous torment as he juggled marriage, fatherhood and responsibility with his obsessive love for Lord Alfred Douglas.

Movie

8.0

1985

Waiting for the Hearse

Mama Cora, who is almost eighty years old, has three sons and a daughter. She lives with one of them, who has serious financial problems. The family meets one day to celebrate an anniversary meal, and that is when the problem arises: which of them will take care of her?

Movie

Recommended Movies

6.0

1995

The Brothers McMullen

Deals with the lives of the three Irish Catholic McMullen brothers from Long Island, New York, over three months, as they grapple with basic ideas and values — love, sex, marriage, religion and family — in the 1990s. Directed, written, produced by and starring Edward Burns.

Movie

5.6

2007

Then She Found Me

A New York schoolteacher hits a midlife crisis when, in quick succession, her husband leaves, her adoptive mother dies and her biological mother, an eccentric talk show host, materializes and turns her life upside down as she begins a courtship with the father of one of her students.

Movie

6.4

1995

Othello

The evil Iago pretends to be friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own end in the film version of this Shakespeare classic.

Movie

6.7

1982

The Scarlet Pimpernel

During the French Revolution, a mysterious English nobleman known only as The Scarlet Pimpernel (a humble wayside flower), snatches French aristos from the jaws of the guillotine, while posing as the foppish Sir Percy Blakeney in society. Percy falls for and marries the beautiful actress Marguerite St. Just, but she is involved with Chauvelin and Robespierre, and Percy's marriage to her may endanger the Pimpernel's plans to save the little Dauphin

Movie

5.7

2020

The Match

One football match on a dirt pitch near Rome becomes a day of reckoning as a young player, his coach and their team's owner wrestle internal demons.

Movie

7.2

1952

The Importance of Being Earnest

Movie

6.5

2016

Genius

New York in the 1920s. Max Perkins, a literary editor is the first to sign such subsequent literary greats as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. When a sprawling, chaotic 1,000-page manuscript by an unknown writer falls into his hands, Perkins is convinced he has discovered a literary genius.

Movie

Assassination of a High School President

5.7

2008

Assassination of a High School President

After the theft of copies of SAT exams from a principal's office, teenage reporter Bobby Funke sets out to unmask the thief. Bobby prints an article fingering Class President Paul Moore as the thief, shredding the youth's reputation. But as Bobby gets to know Paul's girlfriend, Francesca, he comes to realize he was wrong about Paul, so he sets out to unmask the true culprit.

Movie

5.9

2002

Death to Smoochy

Tells the story of Rainbow Randolph, the corrupt, costumed star of a popular children's TV show, who is fired over a bribery scandal and replaced by squeaky-clean Smoochy, a puffy fuchsia rhinoceros. As Smoochy catapults to fame - scoring hit ratings and the affections of a network executive - Randolph makes the unsuspecting rhino the target of his numerous outrageous attempts to exact revenge and reclaim his status as America's sweetheart.

Movie

6.1

2010

Burke & Hare

Two 19th-century opportunists become serial killers so that they can maintain their profitable business supplying cadavers to an anatomist.

Movie

7.1

2004

Modigliani

Set in Paris in 1919, biopic centers on the life of late Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, focusing on his last days as well as his rivalry with Pablo Picasso. Modigliani, a Jew, has fallen in love with Jeanne, a young and beautiful Catholic girl. The couple has an illegitimate child, and Jeanne's bigoted parents send the baby to a faraway convent to be raised by nuns.

Movie

6.6

1997

Wilde

Movie

7.2

1989

Henry V

In the midst of the Hundred Years War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France in 1415.

Movie

5.8

2004

Vanity Fair

Beautiful, funny, passionate, and calculating, Becky is the orphaned daughter of a starving English artist and a French chorus girl. She yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright promises and resolves to conquer English society by any means possible. A mere ascension into the heights of society is simply not enough. So Becky finds a patron in the powerful Marquess of Steyne whose whims enable Becky to realise her dreams. But is the ultimate cost too high for her?

Movie

6.9

1998

Shakespeare in Love

Young Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter," before it's even written. When a lovely noblewoman auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love -- and his play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship progresses, Shakespeare's comedy soon transforms into tragedy.

Movie

7.0

2017

Red Nose Day Actually

Fourteen years after the events of the first film, a series of encounters between people in Britain reminds us that in these different times Love, actually exists.

Movie

6.3

1991

Oscar

Angelo "Snaps" Provolone made his dying father a promise on his deathbed: he would leave the world of crime and become an honest businessman. Despite having no experience in making money in a legal fashion, Snaps sets about to keep his promise.

Movie

6.8

2019

Vita & Virginia

Socialite Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf run in different circles in 1920s London. Despite the odds, the two forge an unconventional affair, set against the backdrop of their own strikingly contemporary marriages.

Movie

6.2

2014

Walking on Sunshine

Set to the music of popular hit songs from the 1980s. A beautiful coastal village, present day Italy. After a whirlwind romance, Maddie is preparing to marry gorgeous Italian Raf, and has invited her sister Taylor to the wedding. Unbeknownst to Maddie, however, Raf is Taylor's ex-holiday flame, and the love of her life...

Movie

5.7

2001

Saving Silverman

A pair of buddies conspire to save their best friend from marrying the wrong woman, a cold-hearted beauty who snatches him from them and breaks up their Neil Diamond cover band.

Movie