Where are Colin and Hugh when you need them?

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2005)

In 1995 the 5 hours miniseries of Pride & Prejudice, with Colin Firth as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet, was a big hit in England and the Netherlands. It even inspired Helen Fielding to write the Bridget Jones's novels. Therefor, whether you'll like the new 2005 movie mainly depends on the fact if you've seen the version that was done ten years ago. If you have, you'll probably be very disappointed with the Knightly movie. If you haven't, well, maybe this romantic flick may be 'amiable' enough for you.
For those who aren't familiar with the story: Pride & Prejudice is a romantic costume drama that takes place in 19th century England and is based on the famous novel by Jane Austen. The story is about the Bennet family, a father, mother and five or six daughters. The only way to secure the future of the children is to marry a party that owns a lot of money. Jane, the oldest sister, is beautiful but a little icy. She hopes to marry young Bingley, a rich aristocrat who just moved to a castle nearby. Her younger sister Elizabeth, the main character of the movie, wants to help her conquer his heart, but finds out that Bingley's best friend, the rich but arrogant mister Darcy, sabotages her plans. Elizabeth and Darcy start out as enemies, but as the story progresses they both find out that their opinions of each other are based on wrong information, pride and prejudice.
Let's bring the good news first. The new Pride & Prejudice is the big Keira Knightly show. Although she cannot top Jennifer Ehle's performance, Knightly proves that she has real star-power and that she is able to carry a movie. She looks lovely in this flick: she enchants you with her great smile and has the charms of a young Winona Ryder. Dame Judi Dench is excellent as Darcy's powerful aunt who is against a marriage and Donald Sutherland has a both moving and funny scene at the end of the movie when he gives permission to Darcy to marry Elizabeth. The end of the movie is actually better than the one in the miniseries.
Okay, then the bad news. I guess the main flaw of this new version is Darcy himself, a role played by Matthew MacFadyen. In the story he is rather dull and generally uninterested in what's going on. It must be difficult to replace Colin Firth as leading man and the Darcy of the miniseries of course had more (screen)time to show his inner struggle. But the new Darcy is so dull that frankly you don't care if he ends up winning Elizabeth's heart or not. There is absolutely no spark between Knightly and MacFadyen. At the end of the movie they don't even kiss and as an audience you couldn't care less.
But Darcy isn't the only one that seems miscast. The new mister Bingley is  despite his Jamie Oliver haircut  a real nerd, and mister Wickham, who falls in love with Elizabeth but elopes with her younger sister, lacks the depth to be an interesting villain. Because of the time-frame, the movie is less subtle than the miniseries. There's a lot to be told in two hours and because of that there is hardly any suspense. Problems rise but they are solved within minutes. But what I really missed were the great dialogs. In the miniseries heavy emotions were always masqueraded by politeness. Darcy doesn't say "Wow, it's great to see you, Elizabeth" but instead asks if her parents are in good health. The things that are NOT said were more interesting than the things that were indeed spoken out. The encounters between Elizabeth and Darcy always turned out to be great fights in which words and sentences were used as swords and daggers. I really missed that in the new version. Come to think of it, I also missed the humor you did see in Ang Lee's Sense & Sensibility, also based on a Jane Austen novel. Where is Hugh Grant when you need him?
A friend of mine  also a journalist  really liked this movie. But he hadn't seen the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version from 1995. So perhaps I'm a little hard on what was presented to me last week, because the film does have its qualities.
7 of out of 10