Woefully miscast

Rating: 2/10 (18 February 2006)

Another example of the contemporary inability to render a classic in anything like its original intent, sense or form. Here we have a parade of third millennium anachronisms almost as preposterous as those on display in the equally absurd current rendering of "Tristan and Isolde." Thus, our heroine Kiera Knightley sails through the whole film with a saucy, feminist tinged, "cat that swallowed the canary," facial expression and vocal delivery, that suggest that she has been watching a great deal of Katie Couric and Elizabeth Vargas, and is dying to drop the word "empowerment," somewhere into her dialogue.
Then there's the "incomparable," Judi Dench--(as the publicity breathlessly assures us). For some incomprehensible reason, contemporary casting directors' are under the lamentable delusion that Miss Dench, (like Maggie Smith) is somehow suited to grande dame roles--when nothing could be further from the truth.
Having seen Miss Dench on stage in a five hour production of "Cymbeline," at Stratford on Avon, I can personally attest to her range and power as an actress. However, whatever her qualifications for Shakespeare, there is nothing in her appearance or deportment that is remotely aristocratic in the 18th/19th century sense of the term.
Indeed, if anything, her persona is pronouncedly proletariat.
Add to that her coarse and rubicund complexion, (un-pancaked in the current naturalistic mode) and her Lady Catherine appears more like a refugee from a Hogarthian gin palace than the daunting and imperious creature Miss Austen intended.
Martita Hunt where are you now that we need you?
There is little to say about Donald Sutherland in the role of Mr. Bennet, inasmuch as he has built a successful career out of being miscast--a feat he continues with this role. And his wife in the picture, (far from the lavender, rose silk and cream Mary Boland of yore) looks like a blowsy, overage bawd from the cast of a backwoods dinner theater production of "Moll Flanders," who has somehow wandered onto the wrong movie set.
But mercifully we at length arrive at the priceless (and now requisite) final clinch, where Miss Knightley and Mr. Macfadyen are depicted in the lotus position on a lake in front of their château, where they proceed to launch into a demonstration of mutual affection that looks like a TV promo for "The Bachelor," and makes one wonder if Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts are standing just outside of camera range whispering instructions.
For now if you absolutely require a filmed alternative to the novel itself--stick with the 1940 Greer Garson or unfairly ignored 1979 British TV version.