Review of Miss Potter (2006) by Rebecca H — 02 Nov 2008

Miss Potter speeds with ease through the first hour, failing to put any obstacles in Beatrix's way and while faintly pointless, is certainly pleasant.

Renee Zellweger plays a mildly insane spinsterish Beatrix, doing her best Bridget Jones voice, which is unfortunately a little distracting. Ewan McGregor makes a thoroughly likeable romantic interest as publisher Mr Warne, with an extremely gay sister, and all anyone has to worry about is Beatrix's overly strict mother. It's hard to believe that Beatrix has any feelings towards Mr Warne due to her uncomfortable glances whenever he gets too close, but since she gets excited about marrying him, presumably she does.

So this pleasant hour is sweet, if pathetic, and can at least certainly be enjoyed as it is filled with Beatrix Potter's entrancing drawings, which is presumably what we are all watching it for anyway. Although don't expect much explanation for how Beatrix came up with her ideas, and certainly no hints as to the often dark twists or back stories that are prevalent in the Tales of Beatrix Potter.

Then comes the big one hour tragedy preceded by no set up or hints at all, so that the shock of something bad actually happening is so ludicrous that it is comic. After ten minutes of depressingly dealing with this comes the chilling realisation that there is only fifteen minutes at most left and there's nothing left to happen for this story, and yet everything left to happen in the life of Beatrix Potter. The minutes dribble by as Beatrix moves to the country, the thing she set up in her opening narration and is wasted in the final couple of minutes. Despite it being obvious where all this has been going since the Jemima Puddleduck flashback, the film doesn't set it up and it ends before it happens, relegating the happy ending to a written epilogue scrunched up in the middle of the screen.

Conclusion - this isn't about anything. It's not about how Beatrix wrote her stories, it's not about her relationship with Mr Warne and it's not about her life in the country. If it wanted to focus on one of these, or more interestingly, all of them, it needed to be much longer. It just feels like they didn't know where it was going when they wrote it, and didn't bother redrafting when they got to the end.