Pride and Prejudice

This movie would have been better off in its own orbit somewhere in a faraway galaxy and not associating itself, even remotely, with Austen's Pride and the Prejudice. Instead, it comes across more-like Connie Francis' Where the Boys Are (1965, Ft. Lauderdale, Spring Break). It ignores the plight of a woman who bases her own social situation on the social standing of her prospective mate. Characters, in this movie, serve very little purpose. Lydia, Kitty, Mary, and Mr. Bingley are colorless and idle and are about nothing (great teeth, however). There is no Mrs. Bennett to light the fire of 'hurry-up and marry'. No Mr. Bennett to promote non-conformity and boredom. Mr. Collins, who is traditionally portrayed as the gallant knight of the Kings James Version, is the awkward oaf but never the marital threat that made his character funny. This Wickam doesn't even come close to being an illusion of a 'fine catch'. Jane and Lizzie aren't even sisters, figuratively, in this weak rendition. But, even this movie couldn't reduce Mr. Darcy. And what woman can resist a man who says 'I'm wrong. I'm sorry. Forgive me. I love you'? (sigh) Ha! The Austen tribute in the movie comes too late. It was like receiving that expensive after-dinner-mint when you've only supped on a bologna sandwich.

I really wanted to like this movie. Modern day adaptations and twists on Austen can be wonderful, many on here have mentioned Clueless, another great one is the Lost in Austen miniseries.

The problem here is not so much the Mormon setting, but the limitations and constraints that Mormon culture appears to put on the writers in terms of plot. I gleaned enough of the cultural setting from other reviewers on here for that to more or less make sense (those reviewers are correct in that it's not very well explained/explained at all).

So what's good? It's nice, bright and colourful. Casting the five sisters as various college friends was an interesting idea. The main actress playing Elizabeth is very watchable. The actor playing Darcy is competent (even if he often looks uncannily like Adrian Lukas, who plays Wickham in the definitive BBC adaptation). Chemistry is more or less there. The quotes from Austen, had they been less hideously pinkly presented, were nearly an interesting touch.

The problem is tone. Austen's work is sharp and exacting, biting, witty and harsh. This was bland. It lacked edge. One got the sense that there was a culturally religious nicely-nicely thing going on here, and it just doesn't work with the background material.

There were slapstick moments that really jarred: particularly in "imagination" sequences - ie they didn't really happen. (Is slapstick perhaps a more tolerable form of humour to Mormons than satire or saucier wit?) Regardless, the movie should have had the guts to follow through with these moments if it wanted that tone, instead of: "no, not really! It didn't really happen, it was just in her mind!" every time. In doing so it weakened the heroine and made her look passive and victimy.

It's hard to fit a novel like Pride & Prejudice into a feature film length, as there are so many characters, and that weakness showed here. The writers would have been better to reduce the amount of female characters (Mary's and Charlotte's roles were mixed up anyway) and they did at least axe one of the Bingley sisters. But ultimately Kitty and Lydia felt very extraneous. From memory, Clueless was slimmed down in terms of supporting cast compared to Emma.

All in all it's a pleasant, visually colourful movie to watch. But it lacks edge, guts and is at times painfully naive. Which, given its religious subtext, is perhaps unsurprising.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is not just a clever romance. It contains strong criticism against a society that punished women for their intelligence, created an upper class for whom working for a living was disgraceful, and operated through social interactions that could make true, intimate friendship difficult. The novel depicts intense pressure on young women to marry, and marry early-- and shows how such marriages can end in tragedy. This movie, however, is almost completely free of serious criticism of Mormon society. Instead, it is full of silly characters doing silly things, wearing foolish outfits and lobbing objects at each other in case you didn't understand that it was supposed to be a comedy. Apparently the pressure to marry that young Mormons feel is really kind of a hoot.

I am a big Jane Austen fan and I am a big fan of the A&E miniseries and so my boyfriend took me to see this. It was a big waste of our time. I thought that Elizabeth was RUDE and why anyone liked her I will never know. Why do filmmakers have to ruin a potentially good movie by making the characters LDS? We walked out on this movie halfway through and rented Bridget Jones's Diary which is a better modern day adaptation than this piece of trash.

If you had to make such an awful, awful movie, could you at least change the title. Just because JA is dead, doesn't mean you can do whatever with her best, beloved masterpiece.

The only saving grace is good looking Darcy. Just looks, his acting is way off too. Nothing upper class, nothing haughty. Lizzy is no better, more annoying. And all the other supporting actors, well, are they real actors? I can't comment on their acting, because there is no acting at all.

I had to watch Colin Firth version of P&P twice again just to get rid of the awful taste from this.