The Editrix is feverish (and not with love for Mr. Tilney) so it might hard to bring teh funneh tonight, but we’ll give it the ol’ Janeite try.

Plenty of news and reviews about Becoming Jane in the press. Alert Janeites AmandaJ and Lisa sent us a link to an article about James Cromwell, who plays Mr. Austen. Hints about the Cluebat were included, but we are not convinced it is necessary, though of course that might just be the fever talking.

“I’m not a follower, I would not say I’m a fan,” says Cromwell of Austen.

“I respect her work but she didn’t write the kind of novels I read … all I know is she has an incredible following.”

Now really, that’s not so bad. They’re not his cuppa. As Stuart Smalley would say, that’s ohhhh-kaaaay. But then…oh, but then…

“From what I gather, Jane Austen’s was an ordinary life in which a woman made an extraordinary choice to pursue her weird (her writing career) at the cost of her happiness (her relationship with LeFroy).”

Um….no. Not really. Jane didn’t have much of a choice in the matter at all.

When an early review from an internet critic ridiculed Hathaway’s portrayal of the key character, Cromwell quickly came to her defence.

“It was this guy in Scotland, he pissed all over Anne for not looking sufficiently intellectual,” he bristled in defence of the Princess Diaries star whose career has blossomed since Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada.

“I don’t know what the hell that means. I don’t know if that meant the film’s Jane Austen wasn’t plain enough.”

We suppose he means the fellow in this review. To refresh everyone’s memory:

Our ultimate theme Austen’s writing, yet we see little to convince that this bland and photogenic girl has much between the ears.

Nothing to do with her looks at all.

Alert Janeite Karenlee sent us another interesting review from IMDB user “tomboy236″ (Keira? Is that you? :-P)

There have already been howls of criticism from outraged Janeites that the film is historically inaccurate. It’s true that English teachers will have a fit at some elements of the story: at best speculative and unsubstantiated, at worst downright erroneous. The filmmakers admittedly didn’t have a lot of historical material to work from. The true background to the story is contained in a couple of letters written by Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, and an admission by Tom Lefroy in old age that he had once been in ‘boyish love’ with the writer. On this slightly shaky platform, the filmmakers have built a story of repressed passion and defiance of social mores that is a work of fiction worthy of a novel in its own right.

This doesn’t really matter. Nobody in their right mind would ever accept the version of events presented by a Hollywood biopic as historical gospel. The only viewers who will be taken in by the story seen here will be those who are too lazy, too uninterested or too credulous to do the modicum of research needed to find out the real facts, and who cares what such people think?

Oh, only those of us who are always introduced to new acquaintances as being “really into Jane Austen” and “has a Jane Austen Web site” and “has written a book about Jane Austen” and then has to hear said new acquaintances’ ill-formed opinions gleaned from silly movies while controlling the homicidal urges. Or those of us who administer Jane Austen fan sites and are burdened with those bursting with their newly-gained Hollywood-style wisdom and can’t WAIT to tell us all about it. Just saying. We really are a cranky old spinster, you know. NOW GET OFF OUR LAWN!

This film may be largely untrue, but what really matters is whether it works on its own terms, qua film.

Well, this is what everyone keeps telling us, so soldiering on:

Unfortunately, it doesn’t, or at least not entirely. The main reason for this is the underlying premise. It is implied that without Jane and Tom’s youthful affair Jane Austen would never have written her six great novels, and in particular (perhaps because it’s the most familiar to audiences) Pride and Prejudice. We see Jane angrily destroying a juvenile story criticized by Tom, and later, in the throes of love, bashing out the first draft of P & P (in a single night, which shows an impressive turn of speed). It’s plain that, as Tom tells her, ‘experience is vital’.

The same clunkingly literal idea – that an artist must experience emotions in order to write about them successfully - underscored Shakespeare in Love, but there it was handled with a rather lighter touch. Here we are asked to believe that Pride and Prejudice was not a distillation of all Jane Austen’s youthful experiences enlivened by a vivid imagination, a sharp sense of humour and a dollop of literary genius, but the next best thing to a true story. The reasons for this approach are obvious: cinema can dramatize Johnny Cash learning the guitar, or Picasso experimenting with paint, but the spectacle of a writer sitting at a desk dreaming and scribbling palls pretty rapidly.

Excellent points, and a thoughtful review.

A few more reviews, courtesy of Google Alerts and Alert Janeite Rosa Cotton. Entertainmentwise.com gives it four out of five stars:

Her literary cannon has been repeatedly plundered

FIYAH!

Oh, sorry.

Realmovienews.com is a bit lukewarm:

It’s fascinating to see the early life of such an influential writer, especially when her circumstances so obviously inspired her storytelling. But the filmmakers play this parallel with a heavy hand, so we feel like we’re watching a mash-up of Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility and Mansfield Park, with most of the main characters in tact. As a result, the plot feels over-familiar and predictable.

The Manchester Evening News gives it three out of five stars:

The film builds to a potentially devastating emotional crescendo but fails to breaks our hearts, ending with a whimper that a writer of Austen’s calibre would have found most disagreeable.

This seems to be becoming a bit of a theme in the reviews: decent setup and lousy follow-through. More on that anon.