Movie Notes: The Jane Austen Book Club
= 3 stars
Starring Emily Blunt, Maria Bello, Amy Brenneman
Directed by Robin Swicord
Synopsis
Six women of various ages form a book club where they read the six books of Jane Austen, which prove quite applicable to their various relationship troubles.
The Good
- Each character fulfills different aspects of Austen’s romantic world — a recently divorced bookworm (Amy Brenneman), a woman resisting a passionate attraction (Maria Bello), and a dour teacher (Emily Blunt) who has fallen out of love with a dull husband. Each of the film’s segments is devoted to one of Austen’s books, and it’s pretty clear that the happenings to the various characters parallel the novels they’re reading.
- Some good performances, in particular, Blunt and Bello. The former gets a rather amusing sequence featuring a traffic light and an Aimee Mann song.
- The last half hour, while quite sickly sweet, somewhat redeems the preceding meandering. The book club members have learned some life lessons from the novels: to believe in love, give it a chance when it presents itself, and put in the necessary effort to make it work.
The Bad
- Blunt’s character is overly serious, depressing, and needlessly cruel to her husband — high school is over.
- The soap opera format is distracting, sometimes confusing, and doesn’t really do justice to the books. Six novels crammed into one movie often feels like Cliff Notes of Cliff Notes. There are full movie versions of every Austen book for those too lazy to read, and this movie sometimes feels meant for those too lazy to watch movies.
Conclusion
An overly sentimental, soap-opera chick flick, complete with saccharine ending. With the bar set at that level, it passes as a rental.
IMDB: The Jane Austen Book Club
Wikipedia: The Jane Austen Book Club
Rotten Tomatoes: The Jane Austen Book Club 65%
Jane Austen’s works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteenth century and are part of the transition to nineteenth-century realism. Only remember her Pride And Prejudice — this book has no analogues. I saw this film, I liked how the romance is presented and casting deserve attention. thank you Robin Swicord.
[…] Connelly is the best of the bunch, playing somber, uptight housewife Janine, whose husband Ben’s (Bradley Cooper) hidden habit of smoking becomes symbolic of their entire marriage – he’s attracted to the mesmerizing, voluptuous, commitment-phobic Anna Marks (Scarlet Johansson). This trio could have been the entire flick, with all other characters banished to The Jane Austen Book Club. […]