Pride and Prejudice? Where?

Rating: 1/10 (21 August 2012)

I am happy to admit before anything else that I entered into the viewing of this film with a great deal of existing bias against it, from what I had heard from others about the differences from the book and BBC Miniseries. I wasn't hoping for much, but I was going to give it a chance and was thoroughly prepared to be blown away by the supposedly breathtaking backdrops and soundtrack.
The only thing that blew me away was boiling indignation and towards the end, sheer boredom.
What connection this mess has to Austen's masterpiece remains a mystery to me. Apparently Joe Wright has never read the book, nor any of the cast or crew. He does seem to be a big fan of Wuthering Heights, though as that is the closest approximation I can make of this wreckage - it is a horrible, modernised mash-up of Austen and Bronte.
To begin, I'll say that I usually always try to find one good thing about a film, even if I hated it but with this I am genuinely struggling. Everyone says the scenery is amazing, but to be honest, I live in England. It's lovely and all but nothing that blew me away. I'm sure that to American viewers it was spectacular and all, but to me I barely noticed it.
So. The horrendous anachronisms. They seemed to be unending and by the end, I gave up screaming at the screen, much to the amusement of my sister. It seems to me that if Joe Wright wanted to make a period piece he should know a little about the period. While some of the mistakes are forgivable to some extent (not to me) other mistakes are simply not. Wearing a sleeveless dress in Regency England would have been like walking around topless and would caused an immense stir. Married women wore white caps inside their own houses. Mr Bennet was a gentleman - a gentleman would not allow pigs to run riot around his "farmhouse". Nor would he allow his daughters to be seen outside with their hair down, no bonnets and gloves. I could go on forever, really. Empire waists, dancing with the lower classes...I'm aware that Wright's goal was to severely dumb down Austen's brilliance, but to purposefully make mistakes is unforgivable.
Then there was the acting. WHO cast Knightly as Elizabeth as WHY? In fact, whoever was in charge of casting for this entire film should be banned from anything to do with movies for life. I remember seeing posters for this film before it came out; the posters were of people in the film and their names beneath. I was horrified even then. Donald Sutherland? REALLY? Judi Dench was the obvious choice for a cowardly director and fit the role well enough but was given little to work with. The sisters too I thought were badly cast as I couldn't tell one from the other most of the time. Jane I suppose was pretty enough, but at times lacked the overall sense of goodness that I wanted from her.
Who the hell is Matthew Macfadyen and why was he cast as the immortal Mr Darcy? He speaks like he's reading lines in a rush and has all the presence of a rusty teaspoon. He had no pride, only a pathetic emo kind of shyness.
Lizzy was reduced to a giggling, pouting moron. My great and wonderful Lizzy...destroyed by the simpering moron and occasionally gurning Knightly. She had no time to be prejudiced as her interactions with Wickham (Orlando Bloom's deformed cousin) lasted all of 45 seconds. At best, Knightly could be seen to be copying the greatness of Ehle's Elizabeth.
Then there was the issue of how frantically rushed everything was. I understand completely that 127 minutes is a squeeze, but it is possible to make a great film from a long book. Sense and Sensibility, anyone? Sometimes speeches were spat out so fast, I thought the DVD was skipping ahead. The first proposal scene felt like it was being speeded by digitally. A little less of Knightly looking off into the distance and little more plot might have meant a little less rushing.
Then for some reason, Wright decided to mix and match Austen's legendary words around! I was screaming at this point. He gave lines to characters who had no place in that scene, added horrendous colloquialisms and completely unnecessary modernisations. Lines were cut and simplified as if Austen wrote in Latin and needed translating for the bubblegum generation. "Don't you dare judge me, Lizzy!" had me pulling my hair out.
The film was dumbed down so much it was barely recognisable. So much of the wit and exasperated humour was eradicated in favour of a much more grim approach to scenes that I'm not sure Wright understood whatsoever. Mr Collins, for example, became someone that I found disturbing and occasionally sinister. He was a comedic element, a buffoon for Lizzy and her Father to mock and abhor. In this, however he was serious to the utmost and at times, far too dull to be borne. Scenes that in the books and BBC series make me laugh out loud, were serious and boring.
Some characters were gone entirely. Mr and Mrs Hurst were where, exactly? Apparently in this version, Mr Bingley (better played by Ron Weasley at this point) only had one sister. Wickham had almost no presence whatsoever and as a major character and device in the story, this was shocking. How did any of this make sense to newcomers of P+P? It was an incredible mess, with nothing to redeem it. I could go on forever, honestly, but I'll leave it and beg true fans of Austen to avoid this abomination like the plague. It takes true determination to ruin something as perfect and incredible as Pride and Prejudice and for that, Joe Wright can have a trophy.