British novelist-actor-comedian Stephen Fry's first attempt at film direction pokes fun at the frantic lives of the young, rich, shallow partygoers known as the Bright Young Things, with surprising visual freshness. Clever editing combines with breathless camera work to imitate the busy meaninglessness of the needlessly idle, and the leads, relative unknowns, hold their own against such lights as Peter O'Toole and Dan Aykroyd.

Broke socialite Adam Symes (Campbell Moore), infatuated with Nina Blount (Mortimer), a bored flitterbug, tries various means to build the capital he needs in order to marry her. Frustrated as a writer (whose manuscript Customs confiscates) and luckless as a gambler, Adam resorts to becoming a social informant for the newspaper, inventing celebrities as the occasion demands. Nina is herself not easy to pin down, so Adam's quest to win her heart and then her hand holds little promise.

Bright Young Things cannot be all the original, Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, was, and it makes no attempt to be. One casualty of Fry's directorial wisdom is the thread binding the story together: though it exists, in the form of Adam's wish to marry Nina, it stretches thin. But the sheer colour, the irreverent dash through the lives of the dashing, and delightful performances by Emily Holgar and Peter O'Toole do much to offset that lack.

Fired from his job, George Monroe (Kline), single divorced architect and father of 16-year-old alienated 'problem child' son Sam (Christensen), discovers that he is dying of cancer. This spurs him to put his house(s) in order - taking custody of Sam and setting about demolishing his present cliff-top disaster of a house and completing the long planned, but never realised, dream home by the sea. With a plot line like this there is a strong danger of the film slipping into mawkish, sentimental sludge. Well, it sort of does - the boy discovers love and transforms himself into a model citizen and son, the ex-wife (Scott Thomas) becomes reconciled - then George dies. The film, however, is salvaged by solid performances all round, from Kline's understated treatment of the character and Scott Thomas's portrayal of the ex-wife, vaguely dissatisfied with her current partner and torn by this new development, and by young Christensen, which lift the characters and give them depth.