‘Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story’ Review: In Blithe Spirits

When Ian Fleming asked him to play the villainous Dr. No in the first 007 movie, Noël Coward, one of the defining theatrical talents of the 20th century, fired off this telegram: “No, no, no, a thousand times no!”

“Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story,” a brisk documentary by Barnaby Thompson, counters that Coward was closer to Broadway’s James Bond, a dashing Brit as cool and dry as a martini. As proof, the film opens with the pop star Adam Lambert reworking Coward’s titular 1932 song into a groove that pairs divinely with a collage of Coward modeling tuxedos — and would go just as well with a montage of Daniel Craig.

Coward’s suave persona was itself a character he played to perfection (and exhaustion) on and offstage. Born into relative poverty, he became a self-educated sophisticate who hid his insecurities and then-criminalized homosexuality under a platinum-plated veneer.

That’s as much psychology as Thompson is willing to indulge. Coward wasn’t one for pity, and neither is the film. Instead, it glides on to name-check his staggering résumé — “Private Lives,” “Design for Living,” “Cavalcade,” “Easy Virtue,” “Brief Encounter” — and parade its wonderful archival footage: travelogues of Coward cradling tiny snakes and home movies with his early boyfriend and business manager, Jack Wilson.

The documentary’s biggest challenge is shaping Coward’s biography into a satisfying roller coaster of highs and lows. During Coward’s years in Jamaica, the narrator (Alan Cumming) regales us with the time Queen Elizabeth II detoured 80 miles to enjoy his beachfront vodka-and-beef bullion shooters; Cumming has scarcely finished the tale before he’s made to intone that Coward, a future knight, was “destined to die forgotten in exile.” Whenever things risk getting personal, you can practically hear Coward repurpose a threat from “Blithe Spirit,” his smash hit about a disgruntled ghost: Stop fawning on me or I shall break something.

Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms.