Ugh. This is what happens when the ignorant watch “creative” adaptations.
To fans of Austen, who wrote Sense and Sensibility, adapted for the screen by Emma Thompson, whose hand is in this script, too, this is worth the fuss. For the rest of us, it is a ponderous soap opera.
Pride and Prejudice? Ponderous soap opera? Ye God and all the little fishes.
Austen’s female-dominated universe is intolerable, to borrow a term from the story.
Son, if you had even a nodding acquaintance with the story, such a comment might be permissible. As such, stand still while we wield the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness upside your melon. *WHACK!*
Dang, that’s a thick one. Better take another swing. *WHACK!*
The story’s focus is the Bennets, a family with many daughters parented by a bystander father (Donald Sutherland) and an overbearing mum (Brenda Blethyn at her creakiest). They flit, sniff and tromp about–rarely without the music
blaring–as they play with ribbons, gossip about others and yammer on at the dining table.
Not Jane’s fault. Not her fault. NOT. JANE’S. BALLY. FAULT!
This is the late 18th century and, since the family farm doesn’t make much money,
It makes two thousand pounds per year, actually. In today’s money, roughly a hundred grand–or $175,000. Do you make that much, Mr. Big Shot Movie Reviewer? Hmm?
Director Wright lavishes this adaptation with glimmering touches of color, luminous lighting and graceful movements, and the pictures are breathtaking.
Oh, fine, say nice things about Mr. Throw Gritty Realistic Mud All Over Jane Austen And You Stuck-Up Prissy Janeites Can Go Jump In The Lake If You Don’t Like It. We tried to tell him, but nooooooo.
Macfadyen and Dench are notably underrepresented though Knightley, Blethyn and screenwriter Deborah Moggach are featured in location interviews, which lend themselves to the spirit of the movie.
“I was just trying to capture the spirit of the thing.” (And the first person who can name that movie reference gets a thousand points that don’t mean anything.)
