Oscar Wilde is one of the most fascinating literary and cultural figures of the past few centuries, and his trial for sodomy can now be seen as one of the pivotal moments in the struggle for gay rights. A peerless comedic playwright and wit, Wilde was brought down at the end of the 19th century (and at the height of his fame) by the hypocritical late-Victorian culture. His life could easily be fodder for a great movie. Too bad Brian Gilbert's (Tom & Viv, Not Without My Daughter) new version stumbles. The current, less restrictive political climate allows for a more accurate portrayal of Wilde's life than has been seen in previous movie treatments, and the fact that Wilde takes as its source Richard Ellman's smart, thorough biography is a good sign. But strangely, given such a lively and important subject, Gilbert has made a boring movie. English comic Stephen Fry (Blackadder, Jeeves & Wooster) is well cast in the title role, and he does a fine job. But the pedestrian setting seldom allows him to engage in more than mere impersonation, and the film plods from incident to incident without creating a real sense of who Wilde was and what his life meant. It's almost as if those behind the movie were handed a list of key occurrences from the last two decades of Wilde's life and felt that portraying them one by one would be enough. It's not. There are many fine works by and about Wilde, and if you haven't read them, you should. Nearly all are preferable to this one.