pride and prejudice new movie!

[bea]

trailer here

... looks very exciting but how can we get colin firth and the bbc production out of our heads... good darcy though! liked him in spooks!!!

I really enjoyed it - liked the grubby realism of the Bennett's house although wasn't sure about the actress playing Lydia ..... not burgeoning enough for us to believe that Wickham would have been taken by her. Also a shame there was not more of the Wickham storyline.
Agree about the Pemberley visit......some unsatisfactory loose-ends (what were Lizzie's Aunt & Uncle up to when she wandered off?) and a strange scene with Lizzie 'admiring' the nude classical statues!!

Sooooooooooo Glad i have read this thread - My dd is named after Miss E Bennet - thus an adaption of the book that i didnt like would really really annoy me!!

Trouble is i cant help wondering what im missing - even if i wont like it!
Not sure ill be able to resist temptation..............

And another thing ..!

I thought that if you didn't know the book, then when Lizzie was going round Pemberley you might have thought she was just changing her mind about Mr Darcy then, for materialistic reasons. There seemed to be a real sense of her looking round and thinking "I must be bonkers to have turned down all this wealth", whereas in the book you don't get any sense of that.

saw it last night . Agree with roisin, it really did skate over the explanations and issues and it seemed somehow superficial for it.Obviously they had to make cuts to fit in the timeframe but felt it lacked depth from cutting out Bingley's other sister, Maria Lucas et al who are the foils for the Bennet sisters, and parts of plot such as the gradual development of the relationship at Pemberley. Also didn't like the deviations from and modern rehash of the original text, and some seemed editting to be done just for the sake of it rather than for clarity. Felt they also didn't make the most of the locations - there was lots of mist, sunrise and rain for dramatic effect but didn't really get much sense of the grandeur of the houses and associated wealth.

The acting was great, although not sure about such a foppish Bingley, doddery Mr Bennet and the younger Bennet sisters who were a bit too alike, and, I know this is anathema, but actually felt MM delivered a more consistent performance than CF .

All in all it felt a bit rushed and, for me, not as successful in the short format as Sense and Sensibility, which iirc is a longer novel.

I liked it, I liked MM very much (never saw him in anything before), not too sure about Kiera but did warm to her near the end. Her body was just the wrong shape for those dresses though. I think I know the book/bbc series too well as I was analysing everything but once I let that go and just watched it, I liked it. I might even buy it on DVD when it comes out.
The casting was better in this version, Mrs Bennett, Jane, mary, Mr Collins, Mr Bingley and sister Bingley all seemed a bit more believable.
Mr Bennetts teeth were ridiculously white though, very distracting.
Darcy is still a great character, regardless of who plays him.

Yes, had temporarily overlooked Donald Sutherland 's false teeth ! Don't think dental hygiene was all that good in early 19th century home counties.

I'm going to drag dh to see it so I can ogle MM a bit more.

The trailer was too hideously American. I got the impression the actors all took themselves a little too seriously which detracts from the wonderful wryness inherent in the original story.
Disappointing!

OK confession time. Has anyone else since seeing the new film, felt the need to drag the dusty videos of the BBC adaption out of the cupboard, and re-watch Colin Firth et al?!

Mr Collins and Mrs Bennett are difficult to believe, it's true, but generally it works much better for me.

Off to re-read the book again now!

They've rerun it recently on bbc4 and UK Gold so I did see it again just before the film.

Emma is my favourite Austen novel, but it doesn't seem to work in a film for me either. I think as a reader you begin at least by having a lot of sympathy for Emma, then your sympathy wanes a bit ... But in a film you realise her true character and faults much earlier, and so have very little sympathy for her at all.

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i fell asleep in it . mm gorgeous though.

Long time since I read the book but I always pictured Lizzie as rather fiesty, clever and and not easily won over. In the film she seemed a little girly in places and not as clever as I had imagined her.

Still an enjoyable romp though.

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The on screen chemistry between Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth was much stronger - but I seem to remember them dating in each other in real life whilst filming, which may have contributed!

I sort of enjoyed it, but spent most of the time nitpicking in my head. What really got me was the manners, or lack of them. NOBODY EVER WORE A HAT. In fact, in this film, wearing a hat seemed to be a sign of moral turpitude, e.g. Lydia wore a hat but Lizzie never did. She would have been dead from pneumonia I would have thought, since she seemed to actually wait for it to rain in order to go out in it in a muslin dress, no coat, no gloves and NO HAT. It's only 60 years or so since women used to keep their hats on when they were out at lunch with friends FGS! And lady Catherine paying calls at midnight - excuse me? And Lizzie going to a party and spending the first five minutes searching very obviously for Wickham - how bloody rude! she never said hello to the hostess. jane austen would have half killed her in print for having the temerity to show she was interested in somebody.

DS was a bit weird in this - and seemed quite happy to be with people most of the time, unlike the book. I thought Brenda Blethyn was not half bad, though much more sympathetic than the book. And Darcy was pretty good.

But why did they make Bingley such a simpering idiot? Why would Jane have fallen for him?

I thought Miss Bingley was the best thing about it!

I agree with Pruni. The dialogue seemed totally out of kilter at points, sometimes pure Jane Austen and other times a kind of modern Jane Austenesque... weird.

I also thought they were rather rude at many points. I know the sisters are silly but to laugh so openly at Mr Collins? Loved Tom Hollander.

Did enjoy it though. I didn't like Caroline Bingley either, but then she didn't get much screen time. Her bitchiness was fantastic in the BBC production.

Manners??? - don't get me started!

Darcy would never have called her 'Miss Elizabeth' - that would have been totally shocking.

He had manners in the book and so it would always have been ' Miss Bennett'

The more I think about it the worse it gets.

This book came third in the recent Big Read, so why oh why did Deborah Moggach, think that she could write better lines than Jane Austen?

agree lilibet. There was very little observation of basic social protocols in this adaptation to the extent that I fear the brazen behaviour of the younger Bennets and Mrs Bennet, the impact of Lydia's elopement and general sense of social strata would be completely lost on the younger and international audiences.

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she would have been Miss Elizabeth (and indeed is in book) when Jane (Miss Bennett) was around.

No Darcy is not a lord.

And hats... have gone OUT of fashion as well as in... Early C20th century was a much more hat wearing time than Regency.

The Miss Bingleys comment upon Lizzie's brown skin when she sees them at Pemberley - clearly she DID go around outside without a hat (because as the muddy petticoat incident showed, enjoying being with her loved ones was more important than fashion to Lizzie).

And the pneumonia comment is pretty authentic, actually, there are contemporary cartoons and writings about how see-through those Empire line muslin dresses were...

Caroline Bingley's cv