Truly atrocious

Rating: 1/10 (10 February 2006)

This is a poor film on every level. True, compressing an Austen into a feature-length film is no easy task, but "Emma" and "Sense & Sensibility" achieved it very well in the late 1990s (and "Mansfield Park" to a lesser extent).
First, let me deal with the good points:
* Keira Knightley as Lizzie is intermittently okay;
* Some of the scenery is pretty;
* Some of the houses were nice;
* Darcy doesn't hurl himself into a dirty duck pond purely for the pleasure of the watching ladeez;
* Err;
* That's it.
And the bad points:
* Mr and Mrs Bennet did not appear to be married - just two people who inhabited the same shabby house;
* None of the sharp wit of Mr Bennet was on display and his accent, in particular, was distinctly dodgy - when he wasn't mumbling his words;
* The director's attempt to portray the Bennets as economically short, compared to their neighbours, as asinine. Dirty walls and windows?
*The script was terrible, mixing some Austenisms with pretty bad modern dialogue;
* The film shifted from scene to scene in a way that would confuse anyone that was not acquainted with the book or previous versions;
* Jane barely had a look-in; likewise Mr Bingley (which was not such a bad thing considering how poor he was);
* The characters of the Bennet girls, Lizzie and Jane apart, were never properly developed - they were just a gaggle of giggling idiots, forever getting caught at the door. The same cliché so many times;
* Keira Knightley may or may not have read the book, but she clearly saw the 1995 BBC version and frequently aped Jennifer Ehle's Lizzie;
* Inadequate development of all the film's character's. Mr Bennet mumbled his words, Bingley barely bothered acting; likewise Darcy. I didn't originally think a great deal of Colin Firth's Mr Darcy, but he is truly alive with character compared to the excremental Matthew Macfadyen;
* Lady Catherine de Burgh's make-up - I don't think the zebra look was ever in fashion. And would a lady so fastidious have daubs of semi-naked men on her drawing room wall? I think not...
* The inside of Pemberly seems to have been modelled on the interior of the Louvre. Was it supposed to be the inside of an English country house or a museum? Terrible!
* The marching of the militia through the *village* was just plain cheesy.
Blimey, this film is just so bad I could go on and on.
To cut a long story short, the acting is bad, the script is bad, the directing is bad, totally lacking in any subtlety. Indeed, experienced actors and actresses, such as Rosumund Pyke and Tom Hollander (respectively, Lady Harriet and Osborne in "Wives and Daughters"), look distinctly unhappy at the roles they were asked to play.