Mr. Woo Goes To The Movies

Has anybody out there ever seen the 1988 film version of Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust? Is it Netflix-worthy?

The cast looks promising at any rate. Judy Dench would be perfect as Mrs. Beaver and I'm sure Alec Guiness would be suitably chilling as the deranged Mr. Todd. Rupert Graves as John Beaver? Yes, I suppose that would work.

I've never heard of James Wilby, so I don't know how he'd do as poor old Tony. As for Kristin Scott Thomas as Brenda, I've certainly heard of her but don't recall seeing her work. Brenda is the single most loathsome characters I can think of in all of Waugh's novels, so it would be interesting to see how Thomas deals with her.

Anyhoo, if you've ever seen this flick, I'd be glad of your opinions. (Keep in mind, of course, my general opinion on screen adaptations of novels.)

UPDATE: Well, I've ordered it up at Netflix anyway. Reading through the comments there, it seemed to me that most criticism of the movie (evidently written by people who had not read the book) centered around the horrible ending of the story. I imagine that it might well have been some similar contemporary criticism that prompted Waugh to write a short story entitled "By Special Request" which is actually an alternative ending to Handful of Dust which cuts out the dark fall of Tony Last and instead substitutes a rather bland, ambiguous conclusion. I have to say that I don't like it very much. Evidently, I'm not the only one.