Review of Vanity Fair (2004) by Ali H — 01 Sep 2007

If Tom Jones and Scarlett O'Hara had a child, she would be Becky Sharp. Except her movie would be ten times more atrocious (I cannot stand Gone with the Wind -- Scarlett is a-- well, anyway--).

It had a lot of things going for it: a classic text (based on the book by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1849), a first-class actress, beautiful costuming and location. What killed it was simply the time. It is very difficult (impossible?) to summarize hundreds and hundreds of pages into even a two-and-a-half-hour movie. Transitions were nonexistent (was that five days or five years??), and the dramatic tension ebbed and flowed like the tide.

But if you really really like period dramas . . . well, the costumes were cool.