The CBC reports that PRIDE AND PREJUDICE has received eight nominations from the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards.

Pride and Prejudice, based on the Jane Austen novel, garnered eight nominations including best actor for Matthew MacFadyen, best director for Joe Wright and best actress for Keira Knightley. Supporting actresses Brenda Blethyn and Rosamund Pike also received nominations.

Critical reception of the film, apparently including London film critics, has been undeniably enthusiastic (the Rotten Tomatoes score is still 86 percent fresh) but in recent days it seems some writers have started to push back.

Gina Fattore, writing in Salon.com (if you are not a paying member, you will have to watch an ad to get access) weighs in from the opposite point of view.

And this is where I get into trouble. Because if I stop here to point out that in the book, Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth that he ardently admires and loves her within the confines of a snug drawing room, we start to enter crazed, Jane-ite spinster territory. Face it. If you are a single woman of a certain age, you can either be obsessed with Jane Austen or you can have cats. You cannot do both, and a long, long time ago I chose Jane. I haven’t just read the books and reread them. I’ve been to her house at Chawton. I’ve seen her grave at Winchester Cathedral (which, for the record, is the only time Jane Austen ever made me cry). I’ve even walked around Bath with a copy of “Persuasion” trying to figure out exactly where Anne Elliot is standing when she first catches sight of Capt. Wentworth on Milsom Street.

All of which renders me uniquely unqualified to have any sort of opinion on this movie. Because really … if the whole thing functions as a satisfying piece of entertainment, why quibble about such tiny little deviations from the book? The sentiments Darcy and Elizabeth express out there in the rain — while looking just as waterlogged as Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell at the end of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” — are essentially what Jane Austen wrote in the novel. And people like it! Which means they like Jane Austen. So what if it’s outside? Conventional Hollywood wisdom dictates that it’s usually better to open up these stilted drawing room productions for cinematic purposes. We get outside, we get a little fresh air. If we’re bored, we can look at the scenery. What’s the harm?

The harm is that trapping would-be lovers in a thunderstorm was already a horrifically trite and clichéd romantic convention circa 1796, when Jane Austen first began writing the novel that would become “Pride and Prejudice.”

We had a tough time picking out a representative quote–the whole article is very good and had us nodding vigorously in several places.

LA Brain Terrain also weighs in on reservations about the film (and kindly mentions AustenBlog as well).

I want to hear what others have to say about the new Pride & Prejudice adaptation. I wasn’t that bothered by the KISS as I was by the director’s misunderstanding of Jane Austen’s sensibilities.

Basically, this adaptation was just Wuthering Heights dressed up in Pride & Prejudice clothing ( and yes, there are Bronte blogs). While I applaud any filmmakers’ effort to bring historical veracity to a film, the decision to move the timeline to the 1790s and make the scenery much more coarse and wild, also made the story more romantic, in the Byronic use of the word.

This is fine but Austen mocked the Romantic, in all her books but most especially Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. This will not do! It’s clear the director had never read or loved the Austen books because he couldn’t love Jane for what she truly was: a clear eyed anti-sentimentalist and a Realist. She may have even been a Mannerist, who knows. The chief crime of this adaptation, directed by Joe Wright, is that he misunderstands Austen, who was telling a story about the dangers of misunderstanding people. Aargh. Perhaps P&P 3 is all just one deliberate cosmic joke on us misunderstood bluestockings.

While we didn’t like the costumes and the mud and the barnyard ambience of the film, we could dismiss them much more easily than the breathtaking misapprehension of what makes the novel great. This has been a difficult point for us to get across, as it does not boil down to details such as “the dress was wrong” or “she didn’t wear gloves at the ball” (though those circumstances also contributed to our general dissatisfaction). It also has been frustrating to have our point of view dismissed as “purist” or “prissy.” We are neither one; not by a long shot. Let’s face it, melodrama is a lot more earnest than satire. We snarkers actually are a rather relaxed lot.

Our main emotions toward the film are frustration and disappointment and the feeling of a waste of a magnificent opportunity to make a truly great film. We cannot believe that those who enjoyed the film would not have enjoyed it just as much, if not more, if the filmmakers were more respectful of the source material and less consumed with “improving” it.