This is what period adaptations used to be like in the Dark Ages.
I checked this out in preparation for the eagerly awaited Sandy-Welch-plotted version due from the BBC later this year.
Ouch! This version takes frightening liberties with the script, not only by creating all the narrative events of the novel in new dialogue between the main characters but inventing new and alarming chapters in the drama, not all of which are at all helpful and some of which are downright indigestible. The dialogue runs on and on at 100 mph, no breath for a pause, no respect whatsoever for Austen's original language, and worse, no sign of its author getting anywhere near Austen's wavelength. Mr Woodhouse, for example, trolls about at a large party at Hartfield (26!!) snatching plates of food out of his guests hand and behaves so like a nutter that it seems quite appropriate for Knightley to rudely ignore him as he stomps off after the row with Emma about Robert Martin.
Dorin Godwin is not nearly talented enough to produce a multi-faceted Emma and the rest of the cast are dull, mechanical and under-rehearsed. I was so put off I had to stop before getting as far as the party at Randalls. I simply couldn't take any more.
I checked this out in preparation for the eagerly awaited Sandy-Welch-plotted version due from the BBC later this year.
Ouch! This version takes frightening liberties with the script, not only by creating all the narrative events of the novel in new dialogue between the main characters but inventing new and alarming chapters in the drama, not all of which are at all helpful and some of which are downright indigestible. The dialogue runs on and on at 100 mph, no breath for a pause, no respect whatsoever for Austen's original language, and worse, no sign of its author getting anywhere near Austen's wavelength. Mr Woodhouse, for example, trolls about at a large party at Hartfield (26!!) snatching plates of food out of his guests hand and behaves so like a nutter that it seems quite appropriate for Knightley to rudely ignore him as he stomps off after the row with Emma about Robert Martin.
Dorin Godwin is not nearly talented enough to produce a multi-faceted Emma and the rest of the cast are dull, mechanical and under-rehearsed. I was so put off I had to stop before getting as far as the party at Randalls. I simply couldn't take any more.