Carry On Wuthering Up The Caribbean
I would say 'Insert Spoiler Warning Here', but actually I could not possibly spoil it any more than it is already and if unwittingly reading the below prevents you from going to see it, then I will have done you a favour.
So, taking advantage of an unexpected babysitter yesterday evening, E & I went to see Pride and Prejudice. I should point out that I was something of a late comer to the legendary 1995 BBC Colin-Firth-In-Wet-Shirt adaptation, which I only saw in full for the first time a few weeks ago; and that I am not as familiar as I might be with the novel. However, as far as I can tell, that version was fairly faithful and almost faultlessly cast.
I have never understood the appeal of Keira Knightley, and even before I had seen Jennifer Ehle’s definitive portrayal, I never quite saw her as Elizabeth Bennett. I was prepared to give her a chance, but within minutes of the film starting she had confirmed all my suspicions and proved herself too immature, too thin and too dizzy. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to smash in her supercilious, lantern-jawed face with an iron for being such a giggling imbecile. Where, in the original text, does it say that Elizabeth is supposed to be more irritating than Lydia? No matter how many times the camera lingered on what I am sure she hoped was her best brooding expression, it was never going to give her any depth. It’s a good thing she was another Elizabeth, really, as she played her exactly the same as her Pirates of the Caribbean namesake.
Had it just been a case of Ms Knightley being an idiotic one-trick pony, then the film might still have been salvaged. There were some weighty names amongst the rest of the cast: Judi Dench as Lady Catherine walked away with every scene in which she appeared, not to mention having the best outfits. Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn as Mr & Mrs Bennett weren’t bad, but somewhat underused and two-dimensional in comparison to Alison Steadman and that bloke whose name I can never remember in the BBC version. Tom Hollander made an excellent Mr Collins, the girl who played Jane was suitably fey and innocent, and Wickham was exceedingly easy on the eye if you happen to like that sort of thing. The interpretation of Mr Bingley as rather bumbling and inept was quite sweet, but I didn’t really buy the idea that someone like that would be Mr Darcy’s first choice as close friend and companion, and the scene where they’re rehearsing his proposal to Jane was just cringingly awful.
‘Cringingly awful’ also applies to the way that all the subtlety and humour of Austen’s characters were abandoned in favour of crass, obvious stereotypes. The heavy implication that everyone not from The Town must be a straw-chewing bumpkin whose primary occupation is to chase piglets out of parties was patronising and ridiculous. The dialogue was inconsistent, which had the effect of making the few bits that were taken from the book seem out of place. I understand that this version of the story was pitched at a younger, trendier more American audience than the BBC version but would Mr Darcy really have spoken like an extra from Beverly Hills 90210?
I really did feel quite sorry for Matthew MacFadyen through a lot of the film. He did his best, the poor dear, even when they tried to turn him into Heathcliff, because one brooding, taciturn, literary antihero is like another, right? Er… whatever. He probably would have made a perfectly adequate Mr Darcy had he had a script as good as Colin Firth’s, but unfortunately what he had to work with would have been more at home in a pantomime half the time.
The inexplicable abandonment of the plot at several points in the film really couldn’t have made it worse than it was already, but if the producers had wanted to make Wuthering Heights then why the hell didn’t they? All that rain and moping about on rocky escarpments looking pensive was not beautiful and innovative cinematography, it was cheesy and annoying. All the scenes featuring Elizabeth and Jane in bed together in floaty nightgowns will no doubt ensure the popularity of the film amongst teenage boys with more Kleenex than sense, but really, what else were they for?
As the story meandered pointlessly towards its dumbed down conclusion I reached for my coat and bag, desperate to get out of the cinema and unwilling to waste any more time than I already had on the whole thing, but the final insult was that the producers could not even afford the story the dignity of ending with Darcy and Elizabeth’s first kiss. Instead we were subjected to a further ten dead horse-flogging minutes of pointless explanation of the entire sorry affair for anyone too stupid to have understood the story from its already over-simplified telling.
All in all, Pride and Prejudice was the most intolerably awful piece of literary rape I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I implore you all not to waste your time and money on doing the same.
So, taking advantage of an unexpected babysitter yesterday evening, E & I went to see Pride and Prejudice. I should point out that I was something of a late comer to the legendary 1995 BBC Colin-Firth-In-Wet-Shirt adaptation, which I only saw in full for the first time a few weeks ago; and that I am not as familiar as I might be with the novel. However, as far as I can tell, that version was fairly faithful and almost faultlessly cast.
I have never understood the appeal of Keira Knightley, and even before I had seen Jennifer Ehle’s definitive portrayal, I never quite saw her as Elizabeth Bennett. I was prepared to give her a chance, but within minutes of the film starting she had confirmed all my suspicions and proved herself too immature, too thin and too dizzy. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to smash in her supercilious, lantern-jawed face with an iron for being such a giggling imbecile. Where, in the original text, does it say that Elizabeth is supposed to be more irritating than Lydia? No matter how many times the camera lingered on what I am sure she hoped was her best brooding expression, it was never going to give her any depth. It’s a good thing she was another Elizabeth, really, as she played her exactly the same as her Pirates of the Caribbean namesake.
Had it just been a case of Ms Knightley being an idiotic one-trick pony, then the film might still have been salvaged. There were some weighty names amongst the rest of the cast: Judi Dench as Lady Catherine walked away with every scene in which she appeared, not to mention having the best outfits. Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn as Mr & Mrs Bennett weren’t bad, but somewhat underused and two-dimensional in comparison to Alison Steadman and that bloke whose name I can never remember in the BBC version. Tom Hollander made an excellent Mr Collins, the girl who played Jane was suitably fey and innocent, and Wickham was exceedingly easy on the eye if you happen to like that sort of thing. The interpretation of Mr Bingley as rather bumbling and inept was quite sweet, but I didn’t really buy the idea that someone like that would be Mr Darcy’s first choice as close friend and companion, and the scene where they’re rehearsing his proposal to Jane was just cringingly awful.
‘Cringingly awful’ also applies to the way that all the subtlety and humour of Austen’s characters were abandoned in favour of crass, obvious stereotypes. The heavy implication that everyone not from The Town must be a straw-chewing bumpkin whose primary occupation is to chase piglets out of parties was patronising and ridiculous. The dialogue was inconsistent, which had the effect of making the few bits that were taken from the book seem out of place. I understand that this version of the story was pitched at a younger, trendier more American audience than the BBC version but would Mr Darcy really have spoken like an extra from Beverly Hills 90210?
I really did feel quite sorry for Matthew MacFadyen through a lot of the film. He did his best, the poor dear, even when they tried to turn him into Heathcliff, because one brooding, taciturn, literary antihero is like another, right? Er… whatever. He probably would have made a perfectly adequate Mr Darcy had he had a script as good as Colin Firth’s, but unfortunately what he had to work with would have been more at home in a pantomime half the time.
The inexplicable abandonment of the plot at several points in the film really couldn’t have made it worse than it was already, but if the producers had wanted to make Wuthering Heights then why the hell didn’t they? All that rain and moping about on rocky escarpments looking pensive was not beautiful and innovative cinematography, it was cheesy and annoying. All the scenes featuring Elizabeth and Jane in bed together in floaty nightgowns will no doubt ensure the popularity of the film amongst teenage boys with more Kleenex than sense, but really, what else were they for?
As the story meandered pointlessly towards its dumbed down conclusion I reached for my coat and bag, desperate to get out of the cinema and unwilling to waste any more time than I already had on the whole thing, but the final insult was that the producers could not even afford the story the dignity of ending with Darcy and Elizabeth’s first kiss. Instead we were subjected to a further ten dead horse-flogging minutes of pointless explanation of the entire sorry affair for anyone too stupid to have understood the story from its already over-simplified telling.
All in all, Pride and Prejudice was the most intolerably awful piece of literary rape I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I implore you all not to waste your time and money on doing the same.