Ten years later, a poor shadow of the 1995 version

Rating: 4/10 (31 July 2009)

I just watched this 2005 version of P & P, ten years and very, very many views later of the 1995 BBC version with Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle. I can't say that I'm happy with this Keira Knightly version. The pacing caused the events to present as blurry moments, fragments taken from the book and patched together that had me grabbing my head. It is natural to use one's previous viewings of other adaptations as benchmark and unfortunately, this film falls quite short of my appreciation of the Colin Firth/Ehle version.
It's a poor Hollywoodized film with a laboured, thin adapted screenplay that is nowhere near as strong as the adaptation Emma Thompson did of "Sense and Sensibility" where, uncannily, one had the impression of all the events in the book, though of necessity shortened for the film, seamlessly put together. Not so here. This quality is absent from Pride and Prejudice of 2005. What I didn't like was the too frivolous younger Bennet Girls whom I couldn't distinguish one from the other. Lydia? This character didn't emerge as the selfish, militia hugging teenager, much stronger than Kitty, therefore should have nailed it with her individuality. This didn't happen so Lydia's elopement doesn't come across seriously enough as the social no-no that it indeed was early 19th century.
I've seen a few Darcys. Laurence Olivier [1940], David Rintoul [1980] and Colin Firth [1995], and to me Colin Firth is the standout turn in this role. I have a high regard for Dame Judy Dench, but as Lady Catherine de Burgh she was forced.
Not a film I liked as much as I loved the 1995 adaptation.