The movie opens as theatrically as it means to continue, with the adult David (a smashing Dev Patel) introducing himself to a packed theater audience before stepping, quite literally, into his past to view his birth. Restructuring some story arcs and jettisoning others, Iannucci and his collaborator, Simon Blackwell, have created a souped-up, trimmed-down adaptation so fleet and entertaining that its cleverness doesn’t immediately register. A wordsmith of uncommon force and fluidity, Iannucci might be one of the few writers undeterred by this doorstop of a tale about one man’s bumpy journey from infancy to middle age. Armando Iannucci? The Scottish satirist and king of the blisteringly profane diatribe? Surely not. “The Personal History of David Copperfield” - the umpteenth stab at visualizing Charles Dickens’s favorite novel - is so sincere in its telling and so innocently buoyant in its presentation that I had to do a double-take on the writing and directing credits.
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