Historical Epic Is No Stuffed Shirt

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XXX "Restoration," with Robert Downey Jr., Sam Neill, David Thewlis, Polly Walker, Meg Ryan, Ian McKellen, Hugh Grant. Directed by Michael Hoffman, from a script by Rupert Walters. Metro. "R" - Restricted due to sexuality. -----------------------------------------------------------------

The story of the playboy doctor who wastes his youth, suffers and redeems himself by performing near-miracle cures is almost archetypal.

Robert Donat played a variation on the character in "The Citadel" (1938). Edmund Purdom was an ancient-Egypt version in "The Egyptian" (1954). Robert Taylor had a go at it in "Magnificent Obsession" (1935), while Rock Hudson played the same role in Douglas Sirk's better-known 1954 remake.

Now Robert Downey Jr. takes on the role in a rambunctious movie set in 17th-century England that immediately dispenses with the stiffness of historical epics. Cast as a promiscuous medical student named Robert Merivel, Downey is terrific as both the hedonistic fool who dominates the first half, and as the humbled physician who finally finds his calling in the second.

Merivel is so full of himself that it takes a while to warm to him as the center of a lavish two-hour tale of indulgence and redemption, yet Downey's electric personality carries us past any objections to the character. When he starts to change, we get to see a tender, joyous side of Downey that hasn't really been explored before. He's used up a lot of screen time lately playing manic creatures; it's good to be reminded that that's not all he can do.

Sam Neill makes a wry King Charles II, who admires Merivel for his medical skill, tires of his excesses and manipulates him into a mock marriage to the king's mistress, Celia (Polly Walker) - while forbidding Merivel to fall in love with her. When Merivel does precisely that, a hilariously eccentric court painter (Hugh Grant) puts a stop to the romance, and the king banishes his playboy physician.

Merivel goes back to live with a more austere friend (David Thewlis), a doctor who's now running a Quaker insane asylum, and he has a child with one of the inmates (Meg Ryan). But the plague is turning London into a cemetery, personal tragedy is never far away, and an old servant friend (Ian McKellen) and the Great Fire of 1666 are about to play important roles in Merivel's deliverance.

Based on a much-admired 1989 novel by Rose Tremain, the script by Rupert Walters can't always handle the abrupt shifts in tone that are needed to jam this story into a two-hour running time. As a result, the movie occasionally fills narrative gaps by falling back on Downey's personality and the wittily over-the-top sets and costumes, which suggest something out of a Monty Python historical skit. But the weak stretches rarely last.

"Restoration" was directed by Michael Hoffman, who made "Soapdish" (1991) with Downey and gave Grant his first film role in "Privileged" (1982), which was also written by Walters. The composer, James Newton Howard, did the scores for Hoffman's "Some Girls" (1989) and "Promised Land" (1988).

They're obviously comfortable working together again, and they give this picture a goofy informality that is perhaps its most distinctive quality. It never feels like a history lesson about the social-political changes wrought by the Restoration, although it could be argued that it's exactly that. Even when it's taking itself seriously, it neatly avoids pomposity.