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hoping that it’s some kind of fad she’ll grow out of: “can anything be done about it?” asks the befuddled Lady Gresham, sharply played by Maggie Smith. Her nephew wants to marry Jane, and he’s rich, so it’s a no-brainer, right? Alas, Jane would rather marry, say it with me, for love. Enter Tom Lefroy, a dashing, witty young lawyer from the city who likes to insult her writing. The two tempestuous personalities, attract, yadda yadda yadda.
The movie’s at its best when it’s simply about these two young people in love and trying to be together (after the whole insult/courtship phase). At these points it’s able to rely on the considerable charms and good looks of Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy, the former of whom, as far as I could tell, sported a solid British accent. They’re both good actors and they sell the attraction, which makes the end of the movie all the more depressing; instead of being happy, they must look very pained all the time. Like they’re constipated.
I’m not saying that everyone needs to live happily ever after at the end of every movie, and indeed it would be quite impossible here since they’re basing it on a true story. But the whole movie feels pretty much like a Jane Austen story, which, along with every movie ever made, have trained us over and over again to believe that Love Conquers All. So when love, in this movie, is halted by a few logistical problems, it just seems…lame.
But even further than that, it actually succeeds in trivializing the motivations of a (presumably) great writer: Jane didn’t get a happy ending, so she makes sure all the characters in her novels do. That’s the end result of Becoming Jane; the movie doesn’t seem to try to dig any deeper than that. I would totally dig the movie if it went for any honest insight into the mind of a writer; that is, after all, what I’m trying to do for a living here. But ultimately, it doesn’t offer anything besides a shallow look at her own failed love affair.
As a sidenote, I don’t know if this is the case in her finished pieces of work, but all of Jane’s writing we hear in the movie essentially consists of about eighty-seven adjectives strung together, so much so that she even stops at one point and says to herself, “too many adjectives.”
Movie Grade: C
Synopsis:
"Becoming Jane," a romantic drama starring Anne Hathaway ("The Devil Wears Prada"), tells the true and surprising story of Jane Austen's early years. The film also stars Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and James McAvoy ("Chronicles of Narnia") and is directed by Julian Jarrold ("Kinky Boots").
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