Stiff Upper Lips (1999)

The fancy corsets and even fancier table manners of British period dramas -- ''Chariots of Fire,'' ''Upstairs Downstairs,'' the whole bleedin' Merchant Ivory repertoire -- provide for welcome, if heavy-handed, ''Naked Gun''-style parody in the giddy trifle Stiff Upper Lips, a sort of after-school project for actors who get paid to wear Edwardian costumes in serious endeavors.

Alas, Leslie Nielsen doesn't play Hudson, the quintessential butler, but the redoubtable Frank Finlay does; he pours tea for a quintessential maiden aunt (Prunella Scales) and her quintessentially sexually hungry niece (Georgina Cates). There are also a twitty, ''Brideshead''-y nephew, an earthy D.H. Lawrencian gardener, a raj-mad tea-plantation owner (Peter Ustinov), and copious jokes needling the blasted class system that continues to earn Ismail Merchant and James Ivory a bundle.

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