Jane Austen Would Be Appalled

Rating: 3/10 (30 November 2007)

I gave this movie a 3 because if it were just another romance movie, it would be alright. It, however, is not just another romance movie. It is supposed to be a screen adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice", one of the greatest novels ever written.
As a faithful screen adaptation, this film fails miserably. At least half the novel was chopped out and tossed aside. Then what was left was mashed together, reformed, and thrown onto the screen as a woefully inept representation of what Jane Austen was really writing about.
There are many times in this movie that a character speaks lines originally spoken by someone entirely different, and often of the opposite sex, for no apparent reason.
Not to mention the fact that Elizabeth was found by Darcy at first to be not at all pretty, but he was then later entranced by her eyes and her spirit. Putting someone like Keira Knightly on the screen is just completely against the character description in the novel.
Please, do yourself a favor; read the book and then watch the A&E Pride & Prejudice. Colin Firth is excellent as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle perfectly capture's Elizabeth's playful, insouciant spirit.