Surprised by Oxford

This is the worst movie I've seen in years. The only positive aspect is the setting and cinematography.

Girl goes to Oxford; pretentious people talk about literature to impress one another; girl flip-flops between b*tch and wallflower yet somehow everyone adores her. Despite no romance or chemistry, she wakes up one random day hopelessly in love with the man she's shunned for a year.

There. Now that you've read my summary, there's no need to watch the movie because the film offers no further character development, insight into humanity, nor entertainment. Whatever philosophical or theological discussions the book might contain have not been well represented on film.

This film keeps touching on some fairly powerful possibilities but then presents them in such an allusive way that the sudden bursts of emotion or reference to strong feelings and dilemmas come a bit out of nowhere. The protagonist is a pretty unique person and has a strong back story, but her interactions with her love interest hover between predictable and unmotivated and what is apparently meant to be a spiritual crisis seems like dilettantism more than profound exploration. Never mind that her main crisis here makes no particular sense given the unanchored quality of both her romantic and her spiritual questings. Really, the best part of the film is glimpses of Oxford and the excellent older British character actors playing the dons.

I enjoyed the book so I was anxious to see the movie, but disappointed. In the book, among Oxford erudites, Caro learned there is more to life than the education of man, God and Jesus. The movie is more about her relationship with the man she falls in love with. I does give one a good perspective of Oxford which seems to have a culture if its own in 37 or 38 colleges. That was interesting and informative.

Admission was more than twice the price of regular admission and may have accounted for just 4 people in the theatre when I went.

I am sending the book to others. See the movie for the scenery.

I did not know anything about this film, I turned up, it had an intro by the writer of the book it's based on - Carolyn Weber, and the producer too. And I have to admit, this film is rather good. The intro goes on about it being a romance film, which it sort of is, but really goes into the lead character- Carolyn's life from a child in America and the years at Oxford, England.

Roes Reid is brilliant as Carolyn, who struggles with study, a strange romance and if she is a religious person, after meeting Kent Weber, played with proper conviction, by Ruairi O'Connor. He is a very religious person and his views and others make Carolyn, really question her life and what she really wants and what she thinks of others.

Oxford looks really nice, the direction by Ryan Whitaker is spot on, capturing the background of Oxford, along with the cast which has star turns from Simon Callow, Jordan Alexandra, Emma Naomi, a very memorable Lourdes Faberes, and the splendid Phyllis logan, who is quite changeable and starts off as very stiff, but really is a driving force too.

I give this 7.5 /10 as I was Surprised by Oxford. But I don't think I'd want to study or work there though..

Carolyn was an agnostic when she first went to Oxford. She learned, however, over time there, that faith and intellect are not oppositional, antithetical, or contradictory. As she experienced longing to be fully known, which no human could satisfy, God pursued her as He had C. S. Lewis. As she resisted faith, finding it inconvenient and an impediment to her longing, she, like C. S. Lewis, was a most reluctant convert. Like C. S. Lewis, she found that real life and God were in paradoxes, as we see throughout the Bible and the life of Christ. She learned that paradoxes are only seeming contradictions. She found that faith and intellect can coexist richly. She found that God could fulfill her longing to be fully known. This is a good movie for those interested in how faith and intellect can be "held in the same hand," as Carolyn learned.