In Gosford Park Fry played the bumbling detective who never manages to get his name out during introductions and misses every clue. The two films have more in common than Fry’s involvement. Bright Young Things has a very prestigious literary pedigree, and Gosford Park takes inspiration from literary tradition but is a purely cinematic invention, but both are light, funny and charming on the surface with more serious issues bubbling beneath their lovely facades.

Both films are set in England between the World Wars. Both show the cataclysmic social upheaval and uncertainty of the time, and the profound changes these shifts in fortune are bringing to the titled class. But as the extended family and hangers on gather for a week-end shooting party in the country in Gosford Park, the characters in Bright Yount Things are the kind of people who invent excuses to skip boring obligations in the country. They want to stay in London and party.

Bright Yount Things moves at a faster city pace, fueled by parties, spectacle, dancing, drinking and cocaine. Historically speaking, cocaine was not quite the vogue Bright Yount Things makes it out to be, but the speeding up of all things social and political of Bright Yount Things fits with the recreational use of “naughty salt,” as the characters call it.

The drug is used to delicious comic effect, including a few brief moments in one big party scene, where an older gentleman, played by the legendary John Mills (he’s 94!) takes a pinch of what he believes to be snuff from a young friend and subsequently follows him around for the evening taking additional pinches.

Parties. That’s what Bright Yount Things does so well. The film begins with a beautiful party. The invitation reads “Inferno,” and the sequence is shot in lush red tones. A photographer trying to snap a few pictures for the tabloids of the privileged misbehaving literally scales the walls to get his pictures and is chased out when he is discovered.

Yes, the bright young things of Bright Yount Things are an earlier, more original version of the party set that the paparazzi of today follow slavishly. Paris Hilton looks dowdy, dull, stupid and tacky compared to these revelers. Bright Yount Things is about how wearing the party life can be. The crowd we run with in Bright Yount Things can’t see this at first, of course, and the sense of adventure and invincibility which fuels them is more fun than the consequences we know are coming.

Bright Yount Things boasts a very large cast of the famous, the less famous and the unknown. The story centers around a young couple, Nina Blount, a prominent but not very well off lovely, played with suitable delicacy by Emily Mortimer. She is loved by many and needs to marry money, but her genuine fondness is for Adam Fenwick-Symes.

Adam has written a novel, the sale of which he hopes will secure him the funds necessary to marry Nina. But Adam’s novel, which he has too cleverly written under the name Sue de Nimes, is confiscated as pornography as he enters the country. Fry who starred as Oscar Wilde in Wilde, has great fun with the strait-laced customs agents and their fear of books and continental “knowledge.”

Adam has already spent the advance given to him by Lord Monomark, a Canadian publisher, a character modeled on Lord Beaverbrook, the kind of guy Rupert Murdock hopes to be some day. Dan Akroyd has too much fun playing the blustering loudmouth.

In the first 20 minutes of Bright Yount Things, Adam wins and loses a fortune several times. Each time he calls Nina with a “Sorry darling, I’m afraid I will/won’t be able to marry you soon …” Stephen Campbell Moore, a British stage actor, makes his film debut as Adam. He makes Adam a very believable product of his time, smart but young and, at the beginning, unsubstantial. Moore is able to change tone very quickly and make all poses seem sincere. It is a subtle winning performance, but he has help.

Fry shows great ability to change tone very quickly. Bright Yount Things is by turns very giddy and very melancholy, and both moods — and the sometimes very quick shifts between the two — fit neatly into the same movie.

As part of their quest to find the cash to marry, Nina sends Adam to visit her father Colonel Blount, in the hope that the two will hit it off and daddy will write a big check. Peter O’Toole nearly steals the picture in a scene that lasts no more than a few minutes, but he plays the slightly off-his-head old colonel as no one else could. He is hilariously funny and very dignified in his daftness.

After the suicide of Lord Balcairn (don’t worry, nothing messy, just falling asleep with the oven door open — very British and a very touching performance by James McAvoy), who has been ostracized for writing a newspaper gossip column under the name Miss Chatterbox, Adam begins writing the column to pay off his debt to Lord Monomark. He and Nina begin making up people and trends. Green bowlers, anyone?

Their friends begin to question just who Miss Chatterbox is, but they are too busy enjoying themselves to care very much. Fenella Woolgar, another stage actress making her screen debut, is especially wonderful as Agatha Runcible. Agatha is so sought after, the Prime Minister’s daughter cannot resist her, resulting in scandal at 10 Downing Street and a very, very funny breakfast scene. Michael Sheen is Miles, one of the wildest of the crowd, who eventually has to flee the country. I don’t have room and wouldn’t want to spoil other delightful little subplots and perfromances that involve Jim Broadbent, Stockard Channing, Julia McKenzie and Simon Callow.

But fun like this can’t last. Exhaustion and the war close in on this crowd. I won’t disclose the ending, which devoted Waugh fans probably won’t find tolerable, but for moviegoers looking for something more upbeat, the worst that can be said about the ending is: too many candles.

Bright Yount Things is full of bright charming things. All aspects of the production are beautifully realized, especially the original score and other musical numbers both by Anne Dudley. I’ve always enjoyed Stephen Fry’s performances, but he may be an actor we see less of as he devotes more time to his considerable abilities as a director.