Vanity Fair

A reworking of William Makepeace Thackerey’s classic novel of social climbing that changes heroine Becky Sharp from evil and ambitious to oppressed and proto-feminist. Largely successful and pretty to look at, Fair’s greatest asset is the bone-dry wit of the script, which brings out the meanness of the English upperclass without getting all Monty Python. If you like cutting comments served cold, costumes that are covered in the colors of the upper castes and creatively condensed accounts of literary classics, then you’ll probably get a kick out of this Fair. If 2 1/2 hours seems like a long time to sit around watching British people be mean to each other, then you should give this one a pass and go see Resident Evil 2. It’s the same concept, i.e. the way certain societies devour the people they encounter, but it’s illustrated in a more straightforward fashion.