Even devoted fans may skip 'Jane Austen Book Club'
But even real fans of the author, not just a male reviewer, are likely to choke on The Jane Austen Book Club.
By Steve Persall, Times film critic
Published October 4, 2007
Review
The Jane Austen Book Club
Grade: C
Director: Robin Swicord
Cast: Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Hugh Dancy, Maggie Grace, Jimmy Smits, Marc Blucas, Kevin Zegers
Screenplay: Robin Swicord, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler
Rating: PG-13; sexual themes, brief profanity and drug use
Running time: 106 min.
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A few years ago, when Hollywood was on a Jane Austen kick and it seemed as if even her grocery list had a chance to be filmed, the pitch meetings must have sounded a lot like The Jane Austen Book Club.
Lots of gushing about the parallels between Austen's prose and the grit of a woman willing, in a patriarchal era, to devise prim stereotypes and incredibly happy endings. Producers liked that, along with Austen's prescient knack for repeating them - the first sequels, if you will.
The Jane Austen Book Club takes that swooning out of studio boardrooms and places it in Sacramento, where five women and one man dissect the author's oeuvre. The dude initially prefers science fiction. That he and two cads become better men after reading Persuasion makes Robin Swicord's movie feel like the fantasy genre.
We shouldn't pretend that The Jane Austen Book Club is for anyone except the author's devoted fans, and it greatly helps if they're women. I'm neither, so my opinion about its lackluster quality as a cinematic work isn't likely to count.
That's fair enough. But don't say I'm not warning you.
Swicord adapts Karen Joy Fowler's novel with the self-assurance that it is the bible of modern feminine sense and sensibilities. What that says about her impressions of modern femininity is open to debate. It appears to be that even the strongest will needs a man to support it except for a lesbian who literally falls into love twice. Or perhaps I missed something while my eyes were rolling.
Not that this is a bad movie, just a listless, predictable one. Swicord leans so heavily on words that action speaks nothing.
Parallels between Austen's novels are either overly obvious, abruptly referenced or stretches that only a literary scholar could make. The performances are as good as the material allows, which is to say mediocre.
Austen wrote six novels, and there's a book club member whose life represents each. Jocelyn (Maria Bello) is like Emma, the matchmaker who refuses to apply her skill to herself. Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) describes herself as "Fanny Price being exiled from Mansfield Park" when her husband (Jimmy Smits) leaves her for another woman.
Sylvia's daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace) has the impetuous spirit of several Austen heroines, though her sexuality sets her apart from them. Prudie (Emily Blunt) is the repressed side of Austen's feminine view, with a high school student (Kevin Zegers) tempting her. Both can expect to mature into someone feisty like Bernadette (Kathy Baker).
The sixth member, Grigg (Hugh Dancy), wears the nice-guy cloak of every Austen object of affection, plus tight bicycle shorts. Dancy plays him like someone who could be having more fun somewhere else.
Swicord tugs her characters to and fro, into love or something like it and out again. Then back in, of course, for one of those fadeout Champagne toasts that only occur in movies that aren't trying very hard. The Jane Austen Book Club will send moviegoers rushing to libraries, some sooner than a filmmaker wants.