Pirated Prejudice Review
Alright...in true flojera fashion, I don't have the energy to produce original stuff just yet. But I got to thinking how, in my alternate life as a Kings fan, I'd written a pretty nifty movie review over at one of our fansites.
Yes, I'm stealing from...myself. How droll.
Anyway, I thought you, my loyal fans, might like a peek.
So here we go:
This is a review of the new Pride & Prejudice adaptation that I wrote over thanksgiving weekend. I pared down some of the hockey references that single me out for dorkdom, but this is pretty much as the Kings crowd got it last month. Which just goes to show you: hockey fans are the coolest human beings on EARTH. Good job us for being so diverse with our interests.
Good times.
------------------------------
Okay, after four failed attempts, (suddently unwilling moviegoing partners, missed start times, ubercrappy mapquest directions to the theater in towns I don't know...) I finally made it to see Pride & Prejudice on Friday.
Well.
It's definitely not the BBC version, but that's actually a good thing. Having enormous boots to fill, they've gone in a very different direction with the cinematography and characters. The result is more streamlined, more funny, less proper, but a bit more human.
In a lot of ways? *Gasp!* I liked it better.
The Bennet family and Longbourne are shown with much less polish in this movie. This added bit of realism makes the divide between Elizabeth, gentleman's daughter, and Darcy, gentleman plus owner of half of Derbyshire much clearer and more insurmountable. Seeing Mr Bennet's dingy library, animals running through the house and daughters sharing beds (but not in true Internet fashion) makes it very clear why Mrs Bennet is as frantic as she is to marry off her daughters.
Mrs Bennet, Mr Collins and Lydia all lose some of their edge that made them border on obnoxious in the mini-series, and become funny, sympathetic characters here. Which may lose some of the satiric bite Austen was going for, but also makes it MUCH easier to spend moviegoing time with these characters when they stay on the softer, more humorous side of ridiculousness.
And Mary was hilarious! She had few lines, but the actor (Tahlulah Riley) made the most of her appearance in scenes through body language and a general look of awkwardness in social situations that made Darcy look like a seasoned partygoer comparatively. Loved her.
Which brings me to: Ah, Darcy.
I described this movie to my bewildered brother as "English Teacher Porn" after asking if his girlfriend wanted to come with us. I guess he was intimidated by the unbridled manliness that is Mr Darcy, 'cuz she couldn't come. Shame.
Of course, the Firthization of Mr Darcy was the best thing to happen to BritLit since Kenneth Branagh. No one could compare to his read: restrained, inscrutable and impassioned at the same time. Porn, I tell you! Firth gave a brilliant performance, and no woman aged 13 to 93 will ever fully recover from the weak-kneed, slack-jawed messes he disolved us into. Talk about setting a high standard!
And so Matthew Macfadyen did what the rest of his movie did so well: he didn't even try to compete. Instead, we get a more emotional, dissheveled, vaguely tortured Darcy--with a dash of Heathcliff, really--which is very different, but it works. Walking into the theater, I knew he wasn't Colin Firth, I knew he wasn't going to be as sexy, as believable, as smoldering...insert sappy adjective here...
...and that really made the movie work for me, because I approached their Mr Darcy with the same "no way, not for me" prejudice that Lizzy felt. See what I did there? Megaliterarysnob time! But by the end of the movie, I was so...he was just...
Ohhhhh.
Yeah, that sums it up nicely.
Bottom line: he had to win me over during the course of the movie, just like he did for Lizzy.
Who, by the way: not Jennifer Ehle, but that worked for her, too. Different, but good.
The biggest difference is a bit of an obvious one: with a run time of 2 hours, some things did need to be trimmed down or omitted altogether. I thought all the changes and omissions were logical, and helped the story move along at a good pace. But--much like Goblet of Fire--I do wonder whether the movie suffers for folks who don't know the story going in. Are certain plot points too rushed? Not for my tastes, but...
The screenplay got a last minute, "unpaid and uncredited" polish from Emma Thompson, who did an amazing job with Sense & Sensibility, so she knows her Austen. (She gets "Special Thanks" in the credits, so, nerd that I am, I had to look into why.)
I'd heard British folk were all a-tither about how sappy and sentimental this production is. And evidently, our month-later North American release upped the saccharine factor (our tag scene is a bit over the top, no lie) exponentially, because we're into that kind of tackiness. Check out the insanely low-budg newscasts (Sky News and Channel 4) that talk about the "P&P kiss controversy" linked from this page.
You can't fool me, Brits...the miniseries ended with a kiss, too. Witness the angry Austenite librarian on the SkyNews broadcast. She seems like a hoot.
------------------------------------
Bottom line: why haven't you seen it yet?
Yes, I'm stealing from...myself. How droll.
Anyway, I thought you, my loyal fans, might like a peek.
So here we go:
This is a review of the new Pride & Prejudice adaptation that I wrote over thanksgiving weekend. I pared down some of the hockey references that single me out for dorkdom, but this is pretty much as the Kings crowd got it last month. Which just goes to show you: hockey fans are the coolest human beings on EARTH. Good job us for being so diverse with our interests.
Good times.
------------------------------
Okay, after four failed attempts, (suddently unwilling moviegoing partners, missed start times, ubercrappy mapquest directions to the theater in towns I don't know...) I finally made it to see Pride & Prejudice on Friday.
Well.
It's definitely not the BBC version, but that's actually a good thing. Having enormous boots to fill, they've gone in a very different direction with the cinematography and characters. The result is more streamlined, more funny, less proper, but a bit more human.
In a lot of ways? *Gasp!* I liked it better.
The Bennet family and Longbourne are shown with much less polish in this movie. This added bit of realism makes the divide between Elizabeth, gentleman's daughter, and Darcy, gentleman plus owner of half of Derbyshire much clearer and more insurmountable. Seeing Mr Bennet's dingy library, animals running through the house and daughters sharing beds (but not in true Internet fashion) makes it very clear why Mrs Bennet is as frantic as she is to marry off her daughters.
Mrs Bennet, Mr Collins and Lydia all lose some of their edge that made them border on obnoxious in the mini-series, and become funny, sympathetic characters here. Which may lose some of the satiric bite Austen was going for, but also makes it MUCH easier to spend moviegoing time with these characters when they stay on the softer, more humorous side of ridiculousness.
And Mary was hilarious! She had few lines, but the actor (Tahlulah Riley) made the most of her appearance in scenes through body language and a general look of awkwardness in social situations that made Darcy look like a seasoned partygoer comparatively. Loved her.
Which brings me to: Ah, Darcy.
I described this movie to my bewildered brother as "English Teacher Porn" after asking if his girlfriend wanted to come with us. I guess he was intimidated by the unbridled manliness that is Mr Darcy, 'cuz she couldn't come. Shame.
Of course, the Firthization of Mr Darcy was the best thing to happen to BritLit since Kenneth Branagh. No one could compare to his read: restrained, inscrutable and impassioned at the same time. Porn, I tell you! Firth gave a brilliant performance, and no woman aged 13 to 93 will ever fully recover from the weak-kneed, slack-jawed messes he disolved us into. Talk about setting a high standard!
And so Matthew Macfadyen did what the rest of his movie did so well: he didn't even try to compete. Instead, we get a more emotional, dissheveled, vaguely tortured Darcy--with a dash of Heathcliff, really--which is very different, but it works. Walking into the theater, I knew he wasn't Colin Firth, I knew he wasn't going to be as sexy, as believable, as smoldering...insert sappy adjective here...
...and that really made the movie work for me, because I approached their Mr Darcy with the same "no way, not for me" prejudice that Lizzy felt. See what I did there? Megaliterarysnob time! But by the end of the movie, I was so...he was just...
Ohhhhh.
Yeah, that sums it up nicely.
Bottom line: he had to win me over during the course of the movie, just like he did for Lizzy.
Who, by the way: not Jennifer Ehle, but that worked for her, too. Different, but good.
The biggest difference is a bit of an obvious one: with a run time of 2 hours, some things did need to be trimmed down or omitted altogether. I thought all the changes and omissions were logical, and helped the story move along at a good pace. But--much like Goblet of Fire--I do wonder whether the movie suffers for folks who don't know the story going in. Are certain plot points too rushed? Not for my tastes, but...
The screenplay got a last minute, "unpaid and uncredited" polish from Emma Thompson, who did an amazing job with Sense & Sensibility, so she knows her Austen. (She gets "Special Thanks" in the credits, so, nerd that I am, I had to look into why.)
I'd heard British folk were all a-tither about how sappy and sentimental this production is. And evidently, our month-later North American release upped the saccharine factor (our tag scene is a bit over the top, no lie) exponentially, because we're into that kind of tackiness. Check out the insanely low-budg newscasts (Sky News and Channel 4) that talk about the "P&P kiss controversy" linked from this page.
You can't fool me, Brits...the miniseries ended with a kiss, too. Witness the angry Austenite librarian on the SkyNews broadcast. She seems like a hoot.
------------------------------------
Bottom line: why haven't you seen it yet?
posted by Tangentially Yours at
3:11 AM
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1 comments
