As every schoolboy knows, providing of course your school wasn’t free, The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde [portrayed in this review by Stephen Fry] and concerns a young man in Victorian era London. Dorian arrives, all fresh face and apple balls, and immediately falls in with a painter called Basil and an upper-class jackass called Lord Henry.

Over a period of time Lord Henry espouses the virtues of new hedonism and Dorian Gray takes to it like a label to a video cassette [ever tried to get one of those off? Nightmare]. Meanwhile young Basil has been painting a portrait of Dorian which, when unveiled, is beloved by all. Much like Messr Gray himself. However as Dorian’s ways become more and more debauched, the picture begins to supernaturally take on the effects, as if for every sin a mark was being left upon Dorian’s soul and the physical representation of that darkness was being born by the painting.

Sounds good right? It is.

The movie version, or rather the most recent one, stars Ben Barnes [Narnia’s Prince Caspian] as the titular Gray and British movie mainstay Colin Firth as his mentor in excess Lord Henry Wotton. Ben Chaplin [who was the original Matt in the first series of Game On, for 90’s TV comedy fans] plays the painter Basil Hallward, responsible for the masterpiece which winds up keeping Gray at about 20 years old forever, healing all his wounds and ills, making him virtually immortal.

This film is not terrible, which is about all I can say for it. Colin Firth is about as believable a libertine as I would be a Jason Bourne. Plus his beard looks like it’s about to peel away from his face at any second. Ben Barnes has a really good go at being Dorian Gray, bless him, but he’s just not accomplished enough to get across the kind of inner torment a character like Gray carries around. And therein lies the rub. Dorian Gray is a perpetually youthful man, but thus far no age appropriate actors can even approach the talent necessary to portray him.

This is Dorian Gray for the Twilight crowd. All emo, shirtless, brooding, and looking off into the middle distance. The love interests, vital to the characterisation, are done away with before you’ve even got comfortable in your chair and before you know it the film has ended while you were waiting for it to start.

Granted, Barnes does more with the character than Stuart Townsend did in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, but I think everyone in that film was being shit on purpose as some kind of prank.

If you must see Dorian Gray then that means you’re a woman, between 14 and 30, and when asked if you’re Team Jacob or Team Edward you actually have an answer.