The Buccaneers

... Wharton died before finishing-writing The Buccaneers, Wadey finishing her story for this screenplay, many viewers and Wharton fans thought her version too "Hollywood," too unrealistic, as ALL of Wharton's previous novels, have markedly realistic & distinctly solemn endings for all their characters & plot lines

... finding the ending suitable or not, it's a decent adaptation for TV, and the cast does good work bringing it to the screen... set in a time one-hundred-fifty-years ago, it's a timeless work that would hold up whenever viewed

... if viewers and fans didn't like the '95 version, can't imagine they'll be viewing the 2023 one any better at all, as they are night-n-day-different... better-or-worse, ur-call.

This movie, The Buccaneers, is one of my all-time favorite movies ever! I love everything about it. The lush, beautiful English homes and countryside. The amazing characters and awesome acting. The authenticity of the period (everything from costumes, hairstyles, sets, etc. - wonderful). The score is so beautiful. I could watch this movie over and over and over and love it each and every time.

The plot moves at just the right pace throughout the entire movie. Never too slow or dragging - but not to fast either - allows you to absorb the richness and beauty of the aristocratic homes (oh, they are so amazing!) and all that surrounds the story. I found myself totally drawn in to these characters in a way I rarely have in any other movie.

Do yourself a favor and watch this enchanting movie!

I paid almost 40 buckaroos for this PBS/BBC collaboration...and it was worth every red cent. What a treat...what a wonderful story...what amazing characters...and what a fantastic cast! Mira, Carla, James Frain, and Greg Wise are absolutely AWESOME. I love them all for making this mini such a delight. It's absorbing to the point that I was glued to my TV set till the very end. Mira's character (Conchita) is full of fire and has an amazingly kind heart...and her Brazilian accent is perfect. Carla wins your heart as the head-strong, and independent Nan (Annabelle). Greg Wise is great as the romantic and determined Guy Twaite. But, the best--to me--is James Frain's Julius, Duke of Trevenick. Julius is one of the most complex characters I've seen on a small or large screen in a very long time. He's a young man who feels immense love but is unable to express it adequately...and when frustrated by his emotions or by his young wife (Nan), he is prone to abusive behavior...that he later regrets. He is a product and victim of his times...a prisoner of his title and what is expected of him as a Duke. Carla's and James' chemistry was so wonderful that some how you hope they will be able to work things out in their difficult marriage. You see all the missed opportunities on the part of both Nan and Julius...opportunities that probably would have made their union a success. So, it's sad and rather tragic to see it all fall apart, when it really didn't have to. But, Julius and Nan are both VERY young...and ill equiped to overcome outside influences, or to fully realize the duties of their positions as Duke and Duchess of Trevenick. Julius is guilty of bad actions and heartless decisions, yet, at the same time, he is capable of sincere kindness and gentle-ness. He is a man torn between the past and it's restraints upon him and the present with it's promise of love and happiness if he would but only allow himself to feel and express it. Julius Trevenick is someone you love and hate at the same time.

All the characters are well drawn. All the cast is first-rate..and the story is extremely compelling. I believe Edith Wharton would be very proud.

We almost gave up at the end of the first episode, which is slow moving and frivolous -- endless scenes of giggling young ladies behaving like thirteen year old girls. But by the end of the second episode we were glad we persisted. In the context of the full story, the carefree lives of the American girls before they get to England, although overdone, is a necessary contrast. This five episode mini-series is a watchable adaptation of Edith Wharton's last (and unfinished) novel. The characters are well drawn, the settings are sumptuous, and the depiction of upper-class English life in the late nineteenth century is believable and illuminating.

Everything about this lush mini-series is wrong, oversimplified, anachronistic, and just plain dishonest. Yet the results are strangely irresistible. The cast is what makes the difference. Mira Sorvino, Carla Gugino, Alison Eliot, and Rya Kihlstedt -- four utterly gorgeous young starlets, all of whom showed enormous promise, none of whom really topped their mid Nineties peak.

Imagine Charlie's Angels in corsets and lace, running here and there with fluttering lashes and heaving bosoms, determined to marry well or bust a bodice. And boy, do they ever! You will not believe the amount of leering sexuality in every scene, like a bad Seventies late night soap. Yet it's all so touchingly innocent, as if in every scene you can here the young actresses telling themselves, "This is culture! This is culture! Oscars await! It's CULTURE!"

To balance out the titillating sleaze, of course, the writers are very careful to make every last eligible bachelor an utter bucket of manure. Such a bold choice! Such intellectual daring it must have taken, to cop a fashionable feminist attitude and just slap it right down in the middle of the soft-core porn worship of all those country houses and heaving bosoms and bursting bodices and corsets laced tight. This is a story that preaches with shrill insistence while undercutting its own supposedly egalitarian message with childlike worship of money and social class.

Now when you read an actual, completed Edith Wharton novel, like THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY, you will notice some interesting differences between the actual Wharton genius and the goofiness of this guilty pleasure. Undine Spragg is a pretty girl, and she wants a rich husband. But Undine is never any better than the people around her. In a lot of ways she is worse! When Edith Wharton sends her to Europe the whole point is that she really is a menace to the civilization she wants to conquer. "You want the things we want but you don't understand why we want them," says an exasperated French count.

That kind of complexity is completely absent from THE BUCCANEERS. The girls are awesome just because, hey, they're GIRLS!!!