Colourful in every sense, The Personal History of David Copperfield is a riotous kaleidoscope of characters and cameos. Period perfection and classic costumery collide with the quickfire quips and contemporary sensibilities of Armando Iannucci’s trademark approach. Dickens would’ve loved it.

Bursting through the backdrop of a theatrical telling of his personal history, David Copperfield strides across a field and into his childhood home to be present at his own birth. But his weakening mother, recently bereaved, is susceptible to stronger personalities. And while she repels the fussy selfishness of eccentric Betsey Trotwood (Tilda Swinton), she succumbs to the bullying behaviours of new hubby Edward Murdstone (Darren Boyd) and his spiteful sister Jane (Games of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie). But by then the boy David has been carted off to a bottling factory in London with only a brief sojourn with nanny Peggotty at her oddball seaside family.

A rollicking roll-call of reechy ne’er-do-wells, foppish fools and salt of the earth sea-folk populate Davy’s fall and rise. Mr Micawber’s venial fecklessness, Mr Dick’s delusional despair, Uriah Heep’s unctuous evil, and Steerforth’s cheerful destructiveness are the warp and weft of Copperfield’s personal story. And played perfectly by, respectively, Peter Capaldi, Hugh Laurie, Ben Wishaw and Aneurin Barnard – and with a wonderfully relatable Dev Patel as David.

Iannucci is the man for the job. With an ear for the comedy of words, he brings Dickens’ book to life. Copperfield jots down overheard phrases on scraps of paper, making sense of the friends, foes and strangers that surge around him. The cracking cast gets under the skin of every character. And there’s Iannucci’s curveball: a colour-blind cast, where Copperfield is Asian, Steerforth’s mum is black, Mr Wickfield’s drink-addled lawyer is Chinese. Well-established in the theatre, it’s a newer thing for cinema and Iannucci goes for it. And while it jolts the narrative in places, everyone plays a blinder.

Cinematically, it’s a joy. Redolent of Victorian England in look and feel, there’s a visual texture that almost kickstarts your olfactory sense of booze and old clothes, fields and seascapes. But as with The Death of Stalin there’s real pathos too, leavened here with the love and light of youthful attraction and finding a family in friends.

Some have hailed Hugh Laurie’s ‘return to comedy’, as the bumbling Mr Dick, beset by the belief that Charles I’s troubled thoughts have found a way into his own brain. But that assessment sells Laurie short. It’s a nuanced, sad and warmly attractive performance. Wishaw’s Heep is as dark and suffocating as an oil slick. Swinton’s donkey-phobe Trotwood is brittle and abrasive but feels the fall in her fortunes. Paul Whitehouse’s sea-dog saviour of lost children, Mr Peggotty, is as tarry-voiced and salt-stained as you’d wish.

One touch of casting curves nicely into David’s personal story, an actor appearing briefly as one character then popping up as another, in a very funny cameo, both times cutting to the heart of Copperfield’s emotional journey.

David Copperfield has the jostle and bustle of a Dickens novel, with witty one-liners and well-lived characters that leap off the screen. And while it’s a touch meta and wears a certain wokeness, really it’s a vibrant, warm, funny and beautifully acted ensemble about the sunlight and shadow in everyone’s life.

At a time when the real-life farce of politics is taking itself beyond the realm of parody, sometimes we need a dose of cinematic escapism. I was surprised to find such a tonic served up by renowned satirist Armando Iannucci, whose rendering of Dickens’ semi-autobiographical David Copperfield appears through a cosy, rose-tinted lens of cheerful, best-of-British humour that reminded me of another Victorian writer, Oscar Wilde - and thus with just enough of a dark undertone to keep us invested.

When David's mother, a widow, remarries, his new stepfather, Mr Murdstone, and Murdstone’s embittered sister, deal him brutal discipline in an attempt to crush his independent spirit, and to assert their own validity among the prescriptive Victorian understanding of gender. He is sent away to work in Murdstone’s bottle factory, wherein begins a roller-coaster ride up and down the echelons of society, as David experiences both apparently carefree wealth and extreme poverty. Against such a backdrop of uncertainty, he has the consistent support of loved ones, even if they can't always reach him to help - and the film concludes with David content with his identity and his place in the world, having carved out success as a writer.

There are cartoonish special effects and scene transitions which give the film the feel of picture book, a nostalgic effect that is augmented by the yellowish light the film is shot in. This may not seem like typical fare for Iannucci, who is more familiar for biting portrayals of the incompetence of those in charge, in Veep and The Thick of It. But his rendering of Dickens' class critique proves another effective vehicle for a fun-filled script full of pacey dialogue, with many a laugh-out-loud moment brought about by some spectacular performances and well-choreographed slapstick fight scenes.

For me, the jewel in the crown of the perfectly-selected cast is Peter Capaldi, as David’s landlord Micawber. Capaldi proves just as convincing at portraying an incorrigibly charming Victorian debtor as he is an expletive-addicted spin doctor, and the fact that two drastically different performances can come from one person working with the same director is testament to Capaldi’s versatility: his comic leaping about and appearance of constantly having to talk himself out of tight spots are supremely watchable. Also fabulous are Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie, relishing their respective characters’ many eccentricities without making them less sympathetic. Theatrical villainy from Ben Whishaw as Uriah Heep brings further laughs, and gentle tension. Amongst these larger-than-life personae, Dev Patel had the less desirable job of the straight man, and his skills were put to good use in still managing to make the relatively boring Copperfield earnest, compelling and likeable.

Despite the overall confectionery tone, there was clearly plenty for Iannucci to get his satirical teeth into, woven through with critique of Victorian rigidity in terms of class and gender, echoes of which are still felt today. While at times the script's banter is sharpened at the expense of a deeper emotional connection with the characters, the film proves 'quite the ride', in David's words - well worth a cheering trip to the cinema.