The Jane Austen Book Club
The Jane Austen Book Club ***
Directed by Robin Swicord
Written by Robin Swicord, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler
Starring:
Kathy Baker as Bernadette
Maria Bello as Jocelyn
Amy Brenneman as Sylvia
Hugh Dancy as Grigg
Marc Blucas as Dean
Emily Blunt as Prudie
Maggie Grace as Allegra
Parisa Fitz-Henley as Corinne
Sybil Martinez as Sally Wong
105 Minutes(Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, brief strong language and some drug use. )
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It's actually quite ironic that "The Jane Austen Book Club" is coming out less than two months after "Becoming Jane" was released-because at that point I just had enough of Austen and remakes of her work, and movies about her. It became like watching the same story over and over, and literally "Becoming Jane" was a paint by numbers movie in a biopic of Jane Austen. Now we have a paint by numbers romantic comedy about a group of women, and one man, who end up starting a club to re-read all the six of the Jane Austen novels, even though their lives are filled with enough plot and heartache for a seventh Austen novel. Anybody that knows much about Austens novels knows that she focused alot of love, romance, and courtship-mostly comic, but sometimes not so much. And they always had a rather happy ending, while the women here are just searching for their happy endings-they haven't quite gotten that far yet. Austen herself was single for her whole life, even though she was engaged for a day-as this film and "Becoming Jane" told me. And even though this is a minor film in the calender of masterpieces that should be coming out this time of year, "The Jane Austen Book Club" is a rather enjoyable little romance film-nothing too heavy and at times actually kind of funny. It also rallies up one of the best female casts since "Evening," and pretty much all of them here are rather under appreciated even though they are all quite good.
The club consists of six members-six members, six books. The first is Bernadette, played by Kathy Baker, who has been married a handful of times and is currently single. While on line at the movies, Bernadette meets Prudence, a high school English teacher that wishes she could be with one of her senior students because she isn't getting enough love from her husband. This inspires Bernadette, and she takes Prudence to meet three other girls. There is Sylvia played by Amy Brenneman, whose husband recently left her for another woman. There is Sylvia's daughter Allegra, played by Maggie Grace, a lesbian that is also having trouble with love. And there is Jocelyn, a dog loving single woman played by the beautiful Maria Bello. Jocelyn ends up meeting Grigg, a twenty something year old computer genius, and he joins the club to get closer to her, but she intends for him to get together with Sylvia. And they decide to read the canon of Austen novels, one a month-Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Persusion, and Northanger Abbey (and I did that from memory, so I'm pleased with myself.)
I have not read any of the Jane Austen books, but this movie actually made me think to pick them up. Since I haven't read them, I probably missed quite of the in-references to Austen's work, but I know enough about her books-and I've seen a few of the film versions-to understand where the conflict was coming from in relation to her novels. And some of it is quite clever. At times I felt some of the characters were a little one-dimensional, and there is a subplot brewing throughout between Prudence and Allegra that never seems to break out. But as contrived and as obvious and as predictable as the movie is, there are some really good performances at the core, one by Hugh Dancy who was surrounded by women in "Evening" and gave the most heartfelt of them all, and here he has a manipulative way of being charming and charismatic. Quite the opposite with the other leading male-Jimmy Smits-who plays Syliva's husband. Smits looks a bit lost, as if he's wondering how he ended up in the movie at all. I think while the men are out watching better films like "3:10 to Yuma" and "Shoot 'Em Up," the women will definitely find an antidote to the action movie blues with "The Jane Austen Book Club." It's an obvious romance film, but its rather well done in the end.
Directed by Robin Swicord
Written by Robin Swicord, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler
Starring:
Kathy Baker as Bernadette
Maria Bello as Jocelyn
Amy Brenneman as Sylvia
Hugh Dancy as Grigg
Marc Blucas as Dean
Emily Blunt as Prudie
Maggie Grace as Allegra
Parisa Fitz-Henley as Corinne
Sybil Martinez as Sally Wong
105 Minutes(Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, brief strong language and some drug use. )
-------------------------------------------------------------------
It's actually quite ironic that "The Jane Austen Book Club" is coming out less than two months after "Becoming Jane" was released-because at that point I just had enough of Austen and remakes of her work, and movies about her. It became like watching the same story over and over, and literally "Becoming Jane" was a paint by numbers movie in a biopic of Jane Austen. Now we have a paint by numbers romantic comedy about a group of women, and one man, who end up starting a club to re-read all the six of the Jane Austen novels, even though their lives are filled with enough plot and heartache for a seventh Austen novel. Anybody that knows much about Austens novels knows that she focused alot of love, romance, and courtship-mostly comic, but sometimes not so much. And they always had a rather happy ending, while the women here are just searching for their happy endings-they haven't quite gotten that far yet. Austen herself was single for her whole life, even though she was engaged for a day-as this film and "Becoming Jane" told me. And even though this is a minor film in the calender of masterpieces that should be coming out this time of year, "The Jane Austen Book Club" is a rather enjoyable little romance film-nothing too heavy and at times actually kind of funny. It also rallies up one of the best female casts since "Evening," and pretty much all of them here are rather under appreciated even though they are all quite good.
The club consists of six members-six members, six books. The first is Bernadette, played by Kathy Baker, who has been married a handful of times and is currently single. While on line at the movies, Bernadette meets Prudence, a high school English teacher that wishes she could be with one of her senior students because she isn't getting enough love from her husband. This inspires Bernadette, and she takes Prudence to meet three other girls. There is Sylvia played by Amy Brenneman, whose husband recently left her for another woman. There is Sylvia's daughter Allegra, played by Maggie Grace, a lesbian that is also having trouble with love. And there is Jocelyn, a dog loving single woman played by the beautiful Maria Bello. Jocelyn ends up meeting Grigg, a twenty something year old computer genius, and he joins the club to get closer to her, but she intends for him to get together with Sylvia. And they decide to read the canon of Austen novels, one a month-Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Persusion, and Northanger Abbey (and I did that from memory, so I'm pleased with myself.)
I have not read any of the Jane Austen books, but this movie actually made me think to pick them up. Since I haven't read them, I probably missed quite of the in-references to Austen's work, but I know enough about her books-and I've seen a few of the film versions-to understand where the conflict was coming from in relation to her novels. And some of it is quite clever. At times I felt some of the characters were a little one-dimensional, and there is a subplot brewing throughout between Prudence and Allegra that never seems to break out. But as contrived and as obvious and as predictable as the movie is, there are some really good performances at the core, one by Hugh Dancy who was surrounded by women in "Evening" and gave the most heartfelt of them all, and here he has a manipulative way of being charming and charismatic. Quite the opposite with the other leading male-Jimmy Smits-who plays Syliva's husband. Smits looks a bit lost, as if he's wondering how he ended up in the movie at all. I think while the men are out watching better films like "3:10 to Yuma" and "Shoot 'Em Up," the women will definitely find an antidote to the action movie blues with "The Jane Austen Book Club." It's an obvious romance film, but its rather well done in the end.
posted by Eric at
1:33 AM
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