Dreadful

Rating: 1/10 (6 October 2010)

This film was so awful I felt it was degrading to even bother watching it. It is a complete and utter insult to anyone with any common sense. Pride and Prejudice it most certainly was NOT. As a film in its own merit without comparing it to the Jane Austen novel, it was barely passable.
Mr. Darcy spoke so fast you felt he was rushing through the sentences to fit the whole film into its running time. He had so many conflicting moods and moments that you didn't warm to him at all, he didn't seem to know himself what he was meant to be like. He spoke sentences like he was reading them straight from the script.
Elizabeth was so flighty and stupid. I hated the dresses she wore. She often looked a mess and completely irritated me all the way through. She had none of the clever wit that she is supposed to possess.
Mr. Bingley...well! What can I say?! He was such a dolt that no woman with an ounce of sense would want to be seen in his company, let alone get married to him! His complete lack of sense or manners was disturbing to say the least.
Jane was pretty but that was all. I never felt drawn to her character or even interested in her fate.
I couldn't work out which of the girls were Kitty or Lydia, they were like vague shadows with no substance. I realised, of course, who Lydia was when the elopement had taken place with Mr Wickham, but even that was unsatisfactory in the extreme. Mr. Wickham looked awful, and not at all the dashing handsome swindler he is supposed to be. We didn't even get to meet him properly or get to know what he was really like, whilst his past relation to the Darcy estate was hurriedly introduced so there was no time to allow this to sink in or take full effect.
Lady Catherine was much too softly spoken to make a forceful, spoilt woman and her arrival at the Bennet house in the early hours of the morning was just ridiculous. I call it house, pig sty may be a better word. Animals wandering through the house?!
The dances were so crowded it was difficult to follow the story at those points.
Altogether, one of the worst films I have ever sat through. If this is the future of period dramas I am mortified.
Jane Austen would turn in her grave.