Not a patch on the BBC Miniseries

Rating: 6/10 (30 October 2005)

I went and saw it today and my Dad remarked the BBC version starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle sets the gold standard - every P+P will be compared to that.
I think the main problems with this movie are that some characters are dreadfully miscast, the limited time (the BBC version had 6+ hours, but this only has two) and the time wasted on unnecessary scenes instead of character building.
Bingley, for instance, is absolutely hopeless. He can't string two words together and is pathetic. You really wonder why Jane falls for him, and are even more bewildered to the fact that he is earning $5000 a year (he doesn't seem very intelligent!). The BBC mini series Bingley was well cast and didn't seem mentally retarded like this one. Keira Knightley is good. Same with the Mum. Jane was an angel. Darcy was surprisingly good. However, I found these characters didn't have the standard of the BBC version, and unfortunately a lot of characters were left out, leaving a huge gap.
Also, there was a lot of time wasted on scenes which didn't really have to be there. There was a lot of dancing, watching Elizabeth walk, dream like scenes there which could have been replaced with character building. It wasn't as evident that Lizzie and her Father were very close. A lot of the main points (e.g the incident with Wickham) are hardly main at all. Wickham hardly gets any air time and I think he too is miscast, but certainly not as bad as Bingly.
Another problem is that I think they tried to modernize this version a little to appeal to more people - probably more people who don't know a single thing about P+P, Jane Austen or the period in which this is Set. Some of the script isn't very old fashioned, as well as some of the hairstyles of the males.
This version seems to have interpreted the Bennets as more lower class. Longborn is hideous, with broken windows and pigs running through. The table manners are disgusting (each man for themselves), and there are some thing in this movie that just aren't right. The BBC version portrays them as more reserved, more upper class people but still quite poor. It is much more believable that way.
However this movie is not all bad. Lovely scenery, wonderful clothes, great houses.. but it's all a bit of an anti-climax, filled with miscast characters & inaccurate incidents. Not a patch on the beautifully done BBC miniseries. It's a hard thing to live up to.