The release date approacheth, and the reviews for Becoming Jane are rather mixed. The latest press is the usual mix of reviews and puff pieces; Rotten Tomatoes has the freshness rating currently at 65%. We’re feeling magnanimous today, so we’ll start with the positive reviews, most of which scold those of us who take issue with the Made Up Story. Ella Taylor says,

Oh, wipe that starchy Masterpiece Theatre moue off your face. Pop Jane Austen is fun, especially when it’s almost completely made up.

Pop Jane Austen can be fun, certainly, and this film is pretty much completely made up. We’re not sure that those two statements go together, however.

According to Becoming Jane, a new addition to the plentiful Austen spinoff canon, our lady of graceful letters was hot stuff at cricket and kissing and had a thing for wicked Wickham — not dull Darcy.

(”There,” said the Editrix to Dorothy with evil glee, “that oughta set ‘em off!”)

I can certainly think of others better suited to Austen’s ironically reserved temperament: tart and funny Emily Blunt, for one

*gasp* Yes, she would have been great, but pretty much wasted in this film.

Betsy Pickle of Scripps News liked it, too.

Plenty of liberties are taken with Austen’s biography, but director Julian Jarrold and his colleagues seem to have nothing but the best of intentions. “Becoming Jane” is a respectful tribute and an enchanting Austen imitation.

Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer waxes most eloquent on the film.

There is recent documented evidence from Jane’s letters to her sister, Cassandra (Anna Maxwell Martin), also never married, that Jane did have at least a flirtatious relationship with Lefroy when she was 20 years old, in 1795.

Recent? Scholars have been aware of this relationship for decades.

The Los Angeles Times has a puff piece on Anne Hathaway.

Hathaway acknowledges that no one will ever know if the two had a harmless flirtation or a real love affair.

“We know she had a relationship with him,” she says. “Right now, it’s divided in the Jane Austen community. Jon Spence found information that suggested a two-year-long hidden affair and a trip to London, and their relationship was over after that. It’s conjecture and hearsay. It’s not that we were so pleased to create liberties, but we didn’t have any choice.”

Well, of course not, but why not “create liberties” that make a spanking good, intelligent story instead of melodramatic drivel?

This devotion to Jane took its toll on the actress. After filming ended, Hathaway became so ill that she was bedridden for a week. She also was even more whippet-thin than usual because she encountered eating problems during the filming that she believes were due to either anxiety or wearing a tight corset. “I couldn’t keep anything down for a month.”

Again with the corset, which obviously was badly fitted.

Now, on to the snark! Annie Wagner of Seattle’s The Stranger is unimpressed by the film.

There isn’t one irritating thing about Becoming Jane, there are about fifty. . .And if you can imagine Jane Austen falling in love with a man who seduces her with a description of mating chickadees—well, let me put it this way: You must be thinking of the other Brontë.

Yowch!

Mark Jenkins of the Washington City Paper simply finds it illogical.

For those who can stomach its premise, the movie is vivacious, well-constructed, and nicely performed, if conceptually thin. . .At the risk of shocking Austen purists, however, Becoming Jane might have been more than a minor entertainment if it had taken more liberties with the sainted Jane.

Not more liberties; just different ones.