Good, not great.

Rating: Null/10 (18 May 2002)

I like this movie, but it missed an awful lot of marks. The cinematography and setting are just dark enough to remain acceptable, but not nearly dark enough for the story. The actors are all pretty good, with the exception of Coltrane and Holme who're terrific. Heather Graham had to act against the dewy-fresh and scrubbed-clean way they costumed her and set her lighting and camera angles, and both she and Depp had to deal with someone telling them to affect ridiculous, not to mention, uneven accents and speech patterns.
I don't think the Hughes Bros. were nearly brave or thoughtful enough to take on this project. They took very few risks and missed most of the visual and story characteristics that made the novel great. They ended up turning a very intellectual work into something more of an entertainment, and on the entertainment level, I thought the movie works. Just don't think too hard when you watch it, or expect anything approximating the novel. If that's the underlying message - that the Victorian era ushered in the age of entertainment over intellectual substance - then they came a bit close to making some sort of point.