Movie Review: Becoming Jane

Last night The Spouse served a perfectly delicious Sunday dinner (rosemary chicken and vegetable-rice pilaf). Afterward, I sat down to watch "Becoming Jane", which seemed like a perfectly appropriate post-Sunday-dinner-very PBS-y sort of thing for me to do.

The movie is based on a book of the same name, a book which I am still slogging through because, frankly, it is full of way more minutiae than I could possibly care about in a lifetime. The essential question is: did Miss Jane Austen have a little more experience of the world and the heart than her traditional biography suggests? The movie decides "yes". I have no idea if it's based in any sort of fact because, as I said, I'm still working through the (very boring and I'll probably never finish it) book.

That said, I was primed for a good time. Let's face it: this pretty much has everything I could possibly want in a movie: women in empire dresses and good looking dudes in breeches (preferably Colin Firth, of course, but in a pinch James McAvoy will do). Toss in the English countryside, some country dances, a couple of small but fine bits by class acts like Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and James Cromwell and I'm pretty much guaranteed satisfaction.

A note: I don't believe nationality should have anything to do with who gets cast for what roles. (I think, for example, of the kerfuffle around the casting of Rene Zelweiger in "Bridget Jones"...certainly she'd not have been my first pick, either, but she owned that part). A good actor, regardless of provenance, should have the ability to learn and deliver the accent of another place. (Paging Meryl Streep, Miss Meryl Streep...). As long as the accent is decent and the performance better there should be no problem.

Anne Hathaway plays Jane. I like Miss Hathaway. I really do. I think she's very competent and interesting to look at and she seems like a pretty level headed and grounded young woman. (We will not discuss her recent and unfortunate choice of boyfriend, if for no other reason than I myself have dated a bounder or two and am therefore not one to talk). So it grieves me to say that I did not enjoy her in this film; primarily because she has a terrible - and I mean terrible - British accent. Oh, sure, she sounded refined and tripped her way elegantly through the prose of the Regency period, affecting all the correct mannerisms while revealing a very Lizzie Bennet sort of sass that was charming. But the woman Can.Not do a decent British accent. And it was, for me, maddeningly distracting.

Here's the thing (and no disrespect to my friends in the UK), it's not that hard to do a passable British accent. Hell, I started working on mine when I was 8 years old, after seeing "Mary Poppins" and deciding that Julie Andrews was the end all and be all.






In fact, the younger generation, inspired by a boy wizard, has the same facility:


So I really don't understand how it is that a young woman with the resume of Miss Hathaway, couldn't affect a more convincing accent or why it was that the casting people decided to go with an American with a bad English accent over any number of British actresses who, I'm sure, would have enjoyed telling a little known story (or complete fabrication, as you like it) about one of Britain's most beloved authors.

It proved to be a distraction that had a profound affect on my overall enjoyment of the film.

That aside there were some nice things about the film. It was effective in conveying the degree to which Jane Austen's simple, country life influenced her writing and for the true Austenphile there are all sorts of references to pick up on, which was fun. It was very pretty to look at and the performances were on balance quite capable. James McAvoy, who is just yummy anyway, was very convincing as the passionate but poor chappie who steals Jane's heart. There was one particular moment, at a dance, that was perfectly executed by both Miss Hathaway and Mr. McAvoy; a moment both subtle and surprising, that symbolized Jane's choices and when it happened I gasped with the delight of it. More such moments and I might have been able to overlook Miss Hathaway's not-accent.

But alas and alack, though there is little to fault in the overall craftsmanship of the film, it was missing something. For a film intending to portray the inspiration behind Miss Austen's stories, it was (save for that one aforementioned moment) fundamentally lacking the tension and wit that were Austen's forte.

"Becoming Jane" was not a complete waste of time but if you need an Austen fix you're better off watching the A&E "Pride and Prejudice". Again.

The Film Czarina gives "Becoming Jane"
out of 5 koihead.