strezise

This film really has the cast one usually dreams of. There are so many familiar faces explicitly there that it's easy to overlook several others who are partly masked by their roles as dead people, for example. Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert de Niro both coast through, relaying on their innate magnetism and charisma to make up for the deafening lack of direction and appalling script. Above all else, this is a lazy film. It depends on a trite, cliché-ridden musical score to lift every change of scene and hint at a chase: it really pounds one into submission (not me, I hasten to add) with its feeble, derivative invention. The editing of the film seems almost random. One moves from one strand of the plot to another with the randomness of a game of snakes and ladders. The premise of the story is enchanting; everything was in place for a great fantasy adventure; but first one needs a bit of drive and flair from those in charge. Apart from a few witty moments, not least with Ricky Gervais almost reprising his Office persona, this film is a waste of two hours and a huge sum of money.

I loved the look of this adaptation of the novel and thought almost all the characters were ideally cast. In fact, I can't imagine a better Elinor, and the rest of the Dashwood family was close to ideal. As usual the BBC found lovely settings, though the cottage is too basic to be believable and too close to the sea (!): Austen's concept of a cottage was a great deal more than this (four reception rooms downstairs, I believe). The problem is the screenplay, which trivialises so much of the novel, fails to understand some of its basic premises, and relies on visual titillation at the expense of the dialogue that was much more in evidence in the BBC's generally superior previous attempt. The moral of the story, both implied in this adaptation and explicit in the book, is to do with the dangers of excessive sensibility and not editing your feelings in order to conform to social conditions. It is not to do with what you do being more important than what you feel, as Marianne puts it during her sudden, Stepford-wife transformation to rationality. Her illness is not physical, and certainly has nothing to do with the ridiculous scene in the rain Davies has devised: it is in her mind. The whole point of the story is to show the danger of over-indulging one's feelings and disengaging from society. Davies: read the book again, and even if the book is to be changed, at least be consistent. The end product here was, I believe, a dumbing down of one of the most miraculous stories of the very early nineteenth century.

The premise is good, the pixels superb, and there is charm in abundance, especially the knowing visual gags, which must often be too deep for children but keep adults on their toes. But the film has serious longeurs. It doesn't really live up to its very promising opening, and the chef villain is a very feeble character -- a real off-the-shelf job. In fact, I think this is colour-by-numbers much of the time. A formulaic, not very imaginative film that looks feeble beside, for example, Antz and the Shrek movies. I don't begrudge the time I spent with it, but given the resources and the background, it could have been much, much better.