Emma

Emma
August 30, 1996
Miramax
Comedy, Romance, Historical
VHS
C+

While on the surface this may seem like a faithful adaptation of the Austen novel, I find it much less in the spirit than Clueless, not to mention the contemporary Kate Beckinsale TV-movie.  I'm going to have to blame writer-director Douglas McGrath for the main flaws: general miscasting (especially of Harriet), a cutesy device of a sentence being started in one scene ("So then I said....") and then finished in the next ("How delightful!"), and the shafting of the Frank Churchill/ Jane Fairfax subplot.  (Enchanted April's Polly Walker and 25-year-old Ewan McGregor both do their best, but they're given little to work with and are misdirected in most of what they do get.)

That said, there are moments when the film forgets its own unnecessary flourishes and focuses on Austen's still great dialogue and plotting.  Even if the cast isn't quite right, it is an interesting assemblage, including 23-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role (sufficiently British but too pouty), 31-year-old Alan Cumming as Mr. Elton, and of course Emma Thompson's mother and 34-year-old sister as Mrs. and Miss Bates.  I have to note that Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightley and Greta Scacchi as Mrs. Weston are both much more interesting and attractive than anyone else in the movie, and I would've actually rather have watched a far from canonical backstory of them being in love ten or fifteen years earlier.

Enchanted April

Enchanted April
April 5, 1992
Miramax
Comedy, Drama, Romance, Historical
VHS
A-

In reviewing the book on which this is based, http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/04/enchanted-april.html, I said that I'd probably give the movie a B+.  But on this, my first viewing in about four years, I found it was even better than I remembered.  Yes, I'm still not entirely satisfied with how the husbands are handled, but the film is nonetheless, as Lottie puts it, a tub of love.  I kept thinking the word "beautiful" again and again.  The movie was shot for television but then released for the big screen, and of course I watch it on TV, on one of three VHS tapes that my ex-husband and I made (we were both big fans), but you could probably watch it on a smart device and still see how lush the scenery is, how the women (even Mrs. Fisher) look like living, breathing paintings.

And the dialogue and narration are in turns sweet, funny, and heart-breaking.  It may well be the movie I own with the least action (even what would develop into a fight scene or a robbery in another story has a happy or at least comedic ending).  It's a reflective, vacation-like movie, and yet there is an undercurrent of sadness, with these characters hurt by loss of love.  Yet Spring means rebirth.

I came to this movie originally because of my fanhood of Josie Lawrence (physically but not spiritually miscast as Lottie).  She's quite lovable on the British comedy-game show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and she's equally lovable here, although Lottie seems to have little in common with her, other than a tendency to say things she didn't intend to.  The rest of the cast is generally strong, but she still stands out as the heart of this movie.

This film is notable for beginning what I call the Three Degrees of Harry Potter and/or Jane Austen.  This is the rule that after a certain point, every British film has someone who was in a Jane Austen adaptation and/or a Harry Potter movie, or at least has someone who's a degree or two from someone who was.  Polly Walker (Lady Caroline) would show up in Emma, while director Mike Newell would helm Goblet of Fire, which has Miranda Richardson as the very un-Rose-Arbuthnot-like Rita Skeeter.  And Jim Broadbent, who's Rose's husband here, would appear as Professor Slughorn later in the series.