Fun and likeable and forgettable: The Personal History of David Copperfield reviewed

Armando Iannucci’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield is a romp told at a lick, and while it’s fun and likeable with fantastic casting — Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick is especially sublime — it is not particularly immersive or memorable. It’s 600 pages squashed into just under two hours so it’s bound to feel more like CliffsNotes (or SparkNotes or York Notes, depending on your era), rather than the real deal. I have nothing against CliffsNotes (or similar), by the way — I loved its synopsis of The Mayor of Casterbridge so much at A-level that I never bothered with the actual book; I did OK — but you still know you are getting the bare bones rather than anything richer or deeper.

Here, Dev Patel stars as Copperfield and there is colour-blind casting throughout, which is excellent, particularly as it will infuriate some people (i.e.