Review of Pride & Prejudice (2005) by Alexandra H — 22 Oct 2011

It's alright. It's not the greatest Jane Austen adaptation ever -- in fact, this might be the most hated Pride and Prejudice adaptation amongst traditional Austen fanatics, as far as I can tell -- I'm not one of them, of course (I *respect* the woman and her talents, but I HIGHLY prefer Brontë, and I guess, Gaskell and Eliot as well), but WOW. Do yourself a favor and entertain yourself with all of the blisteringly bad reviews from them on IMDb or Amazon! They're hilarious!...

...Oh, where was I? *cough*.

Yeah, not the best adaptation ever, but certainly the most *Gothic,* or, at least, attempting to be such. I'm not quite sure if it works, though, and that might not even be just because of everyone being used to Austen flicks being so staid, neat, and stuffy, when everyone in this movie is sweaty, over-emotional, and melodramatic, but because the book itself (I've read up to Chapter 5) doesn't quite lend to that kind of over-the-top tone, and telling by Austen having written Northanger Abbey but having never published it in her lifetime but posthumously (NA mocks and satirizes Gothic literature), she herself may not have had much patience for Gothic romance, so what's the real point of this, other than just to stand out for its sake?

(LONG SENTENCE IS LONG. SORRY. THIS REVIEW IS TURNING ME INTO A VICTORIAN AUTHOR.).

But other than THAT, acting is good if a little over-melodramatic (hey, look! It's Jena Malone with a believable British accent! Whoda thunk? No? Well...); sets are good; costumes are good; direction's alright. Yeah. My own feeling is, there are a billion and one adaptations of this novel: the only one that stands out to me and wins my respect at all is the 1996 miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. All others I've heard of are unnecessary and boring. The 1940 version with Olivier is just inaccurate and weird. This movie is *alright,* but unless you care about Jane Austen at all, you're not really missing much by not seeing this, except by witnessing a director successfully sum up this novel in two hours without causing riots across the world but instead just having a bunch of strongly worded letters about how Colin Firth isn't in this and not just being a steaming pile of crap, but, yeah. Big whoop.

All in all, it's a good movie. But it's both safer and less adventurous than it really thinks it is, just by being yet another Pride and Prejudice adaptation, despite doing a worthy effort to jazz things up. If you really want to be different, you don't do Austen for the billionth time: you do Emily Brontë and you leave all of the creepy stuff in Wuthering Heights (killing puppies, possible marital rape, child abuse, racism, classism, sexism, alcoholism, borderline incest and necrophilia) IN.

(I love Wuthering Heights. I'm biased.).