Reviews

That is a seriously terrible adaptation of the novel Jane Austen wrote. This adaptation has been written by someone who does not understand Jane Austen and what she writes, and just wishes to use her novel to produce nice romantic stories. This would not be so bad if her very words were not used throughout the movies, in a way completely, completely and again completely out of place. The expedient of making the characters loudly repeat excerpts of the book, without caring whether those parts were meant as inner reflections or as dialogues, shows no effort in understanding the novel. But what really bothered me, to the point that I had to give up watching the movie entirely, was that Anne makes her famous speech on men and women, the one that finally conquers again Captain Wentworth's heart, to someone else (Captain Benwick instead of Captain Harville) and in another occasion (in Lyme, at the first dinner they have all together)! And, of course, Captain Wentworth does not even hear the speech. But, hey, it's just the most important scene of the novel, what does it matter when it takes place? Seriously, the only merit of the movie is that there are really good actors (except for Rupert Penry-Jones, which does not know what he is doing, but I don't blame him entirely, for the direction assigned him terrible lines to act). The character of Captain Wentworth is not understood nor by the writers nor by the director of such movie. In short, like what happened in the novel and in the 1995's adaptation which is highly superior to this one, this movie irresistibly made me "take the pen and put down my sentiments", because it is really terrible to see. And a waste indeed, because with such great actors to play Anne, Sir Walter, Elizabeth, Mary, Lady Russell etc., and such lovely locations, this could have been a really good movie.