It's a shame that such a theoretically perfect Dorian Gray as Stuart Townsend was wasted on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Sure, at 31, Townsend was arguably too old for the role in 2003, and even more so in 2009, the year this Dorian Gray was released; he was also too expressive, and based on both this film and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), it seems that the ideal Dorian Gray is a blank page — an unpainted canvas, so to speak, and while this makes a degree of sense, it does leave us wondering what exactly everyone sees in the titular character.
This is especially true of Ben Barnes, who’s so irresistible that he strips a young debutante of her virtue and, when her mother tries protests, he sleeps with her too, winning a bet in the process; this is a development that even Oscar Wilde would find vulgar (but, worse than vulgar, screenwriter Toby Finlay is trite, making Dorian say, when asked by Lord Henry (Colin Firth) what his secret is, the line "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." ”; I shudder to think that someone watching this film might believe that Wilde is responsible for this cliché, even if in 1890 it was not yet a one), and that we find it incredible because Dorian is nowhere near as fascinating as director Oliver Parker would like us to believe (but he is rich, though, so there’s that).
Now, Dorian is a Faustian character, and as such, he has little choice but to be a thankless role — yes, in theory he has a lot of fun (fun that the 1945 film, unlike this one, wisely left offscreen; Dorian’s vices are unspeakable, and trying to flesh them out is useless and counterproductive), but in practice he discovers, like Marcello Mastroianni, that the Dolce Vita is actually very bitter. The movie even manages to screw up the really juicy role of Lord Henry; Firth is a good actor, but wrong (especially when compared to George Sanders in the 1945 version) for this role for the same reasons that made him a poor choice for Valmont.
