Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Personal History of David Copperfield’ on VOD, a Spirited and Wildly Funny Riff on the Dickens Classic

Now on VOD, The Personal History of David Copperfield is a Charles Dickens adaptation lacking the stereotypical stuffiness of many British period pieces. Why? Armando Iannucci. The creator of HBO series Veep and writer-director of acerbic political satire films In the Loop and The Death of Stalin shifts and softens his tone a little bit for the classic story about a London orphan’s adventures into adulthood. But he and co-writer and frequent collaborator Simon Blackwell maintain the lickety-split verbal comedy that characterizes their work, and employ what may be the least-Caucasian cast ever for a Brit period piece.

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Clara Copperfield (Morfydd Clark) is in labor and blind with pain and, poor soul, Tilda Swinton is all up in her face. Swinton plays her aunt Betsey Trotwood, who’s so aghast that the baby isn’t a girl, she up and darts from the home. Clara is a widow, and she must raise young David Copperfield (Jairaj Varsani) alone, or as alone as one gets when one is British and lives on an estate with servants and such, especially Peggotty (Daisy May Cooper), a loving nanny who Betsey ridicules for having a name like a sneeze. But it’s obviously not sustainable, because when David is of primary school age, Clara marries towering blackguard Edward Murdstone (Darren Boyd), who brings his equally towering sister Jane (Gwendoline Christie) with him. Little David says she appears to be carved from Dutch cheese, hopefully out of earshot.

And so the idyll of David’s life ebbs. His stepfather “conquers him” via beatings, then sends him to London to go to “school,” which is not school but actually is the Murdstones’ bottle factory full of enslaved child laborers. He lives with Mr. Micawber (Peter Capaldi) and grows older at the factory, until he’s Dev Patel, and Micawber’s debtors finally catch up to him, forcing David back into Aunt Betsey’s care — and she does care, but has a weird way of showing it, possibly because she’s played by Tilda Swinton, and is a character played by Tilda Swinton who’s also obsessed with chasing donkeys off her property. David befriends Betsey’s boarder and friend Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie), a lovably absent-brained sort; the two men share a passion for writing, and they fly kites together, until David offs to a job as a proctor — whatever that is — in the employ of a man whose daughter he’s ass-over-teakettle smitten with, Dora, who’s played by the same woman who played his mother, Morfydd Clark. Hmm.

What am I forgetting here? Well, developments that might spoil the movie, although the book is now 170 years old, but I forget the statute of limitations of spoilers for adaptations of stories many of us might know but also might not because not everyone took EH364 British Lit: Victorian and Early 20th Century, and even then, if we had, the syllabi will all be different, and there’s no Dickens guarantee for such courses. Anyhow, that’s a long way of saying NO SPOILERS HERE, MAC. But there are some other characters that are key figures in David’s life. So I’ll just mention them: A close friend in Agnes Whitfield (Rosalind Eleazar), and a good drinking buddy in Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard), a helmet-haired ratlike antagonist in Uriah Heep (Ben Whishaw), a boozer businessman in Mr. Wickfield (Benedict Wong), a group of motleys who live on the shore in an overturned boat, etc. With some exception, these people are kind, but they are all inevitably crazy, which makes for good fodder for a book, whether you’re a real writer, or a fictional writer in a book written by the real writer.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Maybe I’m crackers, but this Copperfield sometimes feels like a refined, more sharply honed Monty Python production crossed with the understated wittiness of A Room with a View. Of course, Ianucci’s ratatat ensemble style is prevalent, and he nicely evolves and adapts the dunce-confederacy of The Death of Stalin to the Dickensian catchall-family collective.

Performance Worth Watching: I hereby invoke the No One Upstages Swinton proclamation of 2003, which I think I may have been the author of, having possibly written it in a psychedelic half-dream state (but I think it could be deemed credible by multiple co-signers had I the gumption to lobby). But this truly is a stellar cast, led by an earnest Patel, supported by a wonderfully odd Laurie, a sniveling Whishaw and a memorably, seriously sincere Eleazar.

Memorable Dialogue: Agnes describes living with Heep and his mother: “You can hear their snores like lovelorn toads crawling across a slump.”

Sex and Skin: None. Victorian era.

Our Take: Good luck keeping up with TPHoDC — it’s a loony, freewheeling farce that doesn’t seem to care if you’re chasing its jokes here, there and willy-nilly yonder as they’re fired off by whimsical character after whimsical character, the dialogue written in what must’ve been a creative snit of adventurous and spirited language. It’s dizzying and fun, like a carnival ride, spinning and circling about, with asides within asides (within asides (within asides (within asides))) daring you not to trip over a triple parenthetical on your way out.

So much for the dry day-old bread of English period costume dramas, then. Joy is its primary fuel, which is odd for a biting wit like Ianucci and a social critic like Dickens. Sure, there’s some social-class commentary here, but for the most part the film is a lark, an exercise in wit-flexing and enough surreal visual whiz-bang to remind us that suspending disbelief ain’t the point here And like he did with The Death of Stalin, Ianucci affirms he’s gifted in directing ensemble comedy; this thing is absolutely bursting with tart one-liners and subtle slapstick. For better, many characters are merely jokes, and for worse, many characters are merely jokes. And despite a melancholy breeze in a sweetly touching coda, the screenplay is a little too little too late to develop any true emotional stakes. Don’t mistake this for being anything more than an ever so slightly too-long absolute delight.

Our Call: The Personal History of David Copperfield is a wonderful whirling dervish of a comedy with an extraordinary cast and a script to match. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream The Personal History of David Copperfield