User Reviews

Gah, what can I say about this adaptation. The good? Well…it was better than the Patricia Rozema version! And…a couple of the actors were well-cast. And…that's about it. Yup, it was a dud. Patricia Rozema made a terrible movie, but you could tell she cared about the movie she made. This one…it was as if their hearts weren't in it. The script was dull and the budget was almost nonexistent. Everything took place in the same couple of rooms or on the lawn at Mansfield Park. That means no Portsmouth and no Prices, other than Fanny and William, and no trip to Sotherton. And the casting and characterizations…most were decent (with a couple bizarre exceptions) but nothing amazing.

The bizarre casting choice for me was definitely Billie Piper. This is a horrible thing for me to say, but I thought she looked more like a prostitute than Fanny Price, with the cleavage, the bleach blond hair (but still black eyebrows!), and the buck tooth veneers. The screenwriter really didn't seem to know what to do with her character either. She had moments where she was quiet and shy and observant and others where she was running around laughing like Patricia Rozema's Fanny. They wanted to stay truer to the book character, I guess, but were still afraid to keep Fanny really as she was. Really, the only compliment I can give is that she and the actress who played young Fanny really looked alike.

I guess if you're really turned off by the old-school production values in the 1983 version or you can't find a copy, it would be better to watch this version than the 1999 one. That version was so horrible though that anything looks better in comparison. I hope one day we get a new full miniseries version that features the "real" Fanny Price as she is in the book.

I am fanatical about the novel Mansfield Park; it is my favorite book of all time. I read it constantly- always starting over when I reach the end. I'm not a book-to-film-nazi however, so I don't mind that films are different from books. It's not mentally taxing- come to think of it, this film reminds me a lot of Disney film, where it's all rated G and nothing gets too serious or too thought-provoking. As long as it's not viewed as a film related to the Jane Austen novel, it is enjoyable and delightful to watch. Maybe that defeats the purpose?

There are a few things that are bothersome, as someone who knows the story well: **Spoilers Follow** Fanny Price is not meant to be a free-spirit. Yet in this film, she lilts around like a hippie with her hair flowing down and she perpetually runs through the mansion laughing and playing and bumping into servants. Since a silently tortured Fanny is pivotal to the story, this huge personality change is very disappointing. The building tension of the story is precisely what makes it so great, and that is missing here, which is probably why it reminds me of a Disney flick. If one wants to see a delightful Elizabeth Bennett character, one should watch Pride & Prejudice.

Also, as aforementioned in other comments, not sending Fanny away from Mansfield to her poor home most definitely changes the anatomy of the story as well. To be isolated for months (not three weeks) with virtual strangers in a strange, cramped, poor home is vital to Fanny's isolation. In this film I suppose it's easy to leave out, since we never get the sense that Fanny becomes slightly won over by Mr. Crawford. I realize the filmmakers didn't have a lot of money, but they could have converted one of the many rooms in the mansion they filmed in into makeshift cramped quarters. Maybe they couldn't afford more actors.

I got an overall feeling from the film that the filmmakers intended to dumb down the social structure of the period so that viewers wouldn't be confused about why certain behaviors and proposals were improprietous. If they wanted to reach more than just period piece lovers, I can understand their penchant for doing so.

I feel Blake Ritson, who plays Edmund was, well-cast and the cinematography was excellent. The costuming wasn't always accurate, but very well done. The sets were gorgeous and I really feel that with the correct story structure and direction that Billie Piper (whom I'd never seen before) could actually have been a great Fanny Price. It was also very satisfying to see Fanny and Edmund at their wedding! Overall, this really is a fun, sweet film on it's own!

Fanny Price, the daughter of a poor family in Regency England, goes to stay with her wealthy relatives, the Bertram family, in their elegant stately home, Mansfield Park. (Fanny's mother and Lady Bertram are sisters). Fanny falls in love with her cousin Edmund, the younger son of the family, who is in training for the priesthood, but he seems to be infatuated with the beautiful Mary Crawford. Fanny herself is pursued by Mary's brother Henry, but she distrusts him and rejects his proposal of marriage.

The BBC made "Mansfield Park" into a TV series in the eighties, but although it was done in the best BBC style and kept faithfully to the book, it was a rather lifeless affair, with Fanny seeming just as dull on the screen as on the page. Patricia Rozema's 1999 film aimed at a radical reinterpretation, touching on modern concerns such as racism and working-class poverty, but for me this was a failure, the weakest entry in the Jane Austen cycle of the nineties. If you are trying to make a serious film about slavery in the nineteenth-century Caribbean, or even unemployment among the labouring poor in nineteenth-century Britain, I would not recommend Austen's novel as a starting-point.

This latest adaptation has come in for a lot of criticism, some of it based on the preconception that a commercial channel such as ITV cannot do period drama as well as its public-service rivals at the BBC. Most of the criticism, however, was aimed at the casting of Billie Piper as Fanny. Piper is blonde, attractive and sexy, and a frequent tabloid pin-up. She also started her career as a teenage pop starlet, Britain's answer to Britney Spears, and was at one time married to the radio presenter and producer Chris Evans. Consequently, many purists find it difficult to take her seriously as an actress. A "Dr Who" girl, possibly. A Jane Austen heroine, never.

Criticism was also aimed at the way the heroine was played. Although in the original novel Fanny is a quiet, demure girl (and this is how she was played by Sylvestra Le Touzel in the BBC serialisation), Piper played her as lively, outgoing and high-spirited, closer in spirit to other Austen heroines such as Elizabeth Bennett or Catherine Morland. She even dares to challenge her autocratic uncle Sir Thomas, who owns slave plantations in the Caribbean, on the question of slavery, asking him if he thinks that the institution will ever be abolished.

In my view this was the right approach (and the one also taken by Frances O'Connor who played Fanny in Rozema's film). This is perhaps the Jane Austen novel in which it is most difficult to interest a modern audience, to whom Fanny and Edmund can seem at best dull and insipid and at worst self-righteous and priggish. By contrast Mary and Henry, whom Austen obviously intended to be the villains of the piece, can today seem more interesting and lively, even more sympathetic. Fanny as interpreted by Piper may not be the Fanny of Austen's novel, but to my mind hers was a characterisation which works well in the context of this particular film. Could one imagine Billie Piper inhabiting the early nineteenth century? Undoubtedly, if one rids oneself of the idea that anyone born before 1900 was a member of a quite different species, only distantly related to modern Homo sapiens.

Unfortunately, the film did not manage to make most of the other characters interesting in the same way. This was probably because the two-hours-minus-commercial-breaks format allows less time for character development than does the alternative TV format for dramatising novels, the serial extended over several episodes. Some characters in particular, notably the Bertram sisters and Mrs Norris, came across as very one-dimensional.

The one exception was perhaps Hayley Attwell's fascinating but unreliable Mary Crawford, a character who plays a key role in the book as her values are contrasted with those of the more solid characters such as Fanny and Edmund. Jane Austen was a devout Christian, but her religious views do not intrude much into her other five novels. Although she was herself the daughter of a country parson, her portrayals of clergymen, such as Mr Collins in "Pride and Prejudice" and Mr Elton in "Emma", are often sharply satirical. The sympathetic Henry Tilney in "Northanger Abbey" is also a parson, but little in the book turns upon his profession. In "Mansfield Park", however, there is more serious discussion of religious topics. Whereas the likes of Mr Collins may have chosen a career in the Church out of mercenary motives, Edmund has done so out of genuine religious conviction, which makes him an unsuitable match for the aggressively secular-minded (and in this respect very modern) Mary. This contrast was well brought out in this version.

I doubt if any filmed version of "Mansfield Park" is ever going to achieve the popularity of some Austen adaptations such as Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility", the recent "Pride and Prejudice" or even the Gwyneth Paltrow "Emma". Nevertheless, of the three versions, this is the one that I prefer. The BBC series was too slavishly close to the original novel, while Rozema's film departed too radically from it. ITV seem to have got the balance right. 6/10

I agree with most of the reviews that Billie Piper was not a convincing, or perhaps I should say, correct choice for Fanny Price.

I really want to see a Fanny Price (written AND acted) who is strong in a QUIET way, just as Jane Austen presented her - and she IS strong in the book, standing her ground in refusing to marry Mr. Crawford even in the face of so much pressure - but it seems that screenwriters are ever afraid to present her as she is in the book. Do they think it would be beyond the capabilities of most actresses? Must Fanny Price always be written as a vivacious, playful, conscious of the wrongs done to her, sequel to Elizabth Bennet?

Can't I see a quiet woman who is pure without being puritanical, shy but still able to have strong convictions about right and wrong, accepting of her (low) place in the family without being resentful (as she was in the book), perceptive without being self-righteous about what she sees in others? (Sigh) It must be too hard, let's just stick a 21st century female in Mansfield Park and be done with it.

On the bright side, Blake Ritson is perfect. I look at him and it is as though an illustration of a Gentleman of the time has come alive and walked out into the world. And he manages to present so wonderfully the key to Edmund's character - that he is in love with an ideal, but does not see it lives right in front of him (in the person of Fanny) until after the heartbreak with Mary Crawford. I think those eyes... mmm, make women feel a little... naughty! Though I am sure Jane Austen would never write so, because of course as we all know sex did not exist back then ;)!

Oh dear, well so far this show hasn't got very good reviews, and I don't understand why because all in all I thought it was very enjoyable. Much of the plot was missed out, but this is understandable because it is a very long book which had to be squeezed into a 2 hour slot. In the book, we can see Henry Crawford's love for Fanny building up over quite a while, but for those viewers who have never read the book, it comes as a surprise and happens too quickly and for that reason doesn't quite work. Also I think that Mrs Norris doesn't seem quite odious enough.

However there are many positive things to say about the adaption. I think Edmund Bertram is quite to perfection; just how I imagined him. Billy Piper did a very commendable performance - and we see her grow throughout.

Overall I would say it is well worth a watch, genuinely!

This was not the greatest adaptation I have seen of a Jane Austen novel, but it was by no means the worst, and I feel that some of the comments written by other contributors have been unduly harsh.

To be fair, if you want really great Jane Auten heroines then you should look no further than Keira Knightly (in Pride and Prejudice) or Gwynneth Paltrow (in Emma). But then both of those productions had huge budgets, brilliant casts, and certainly the former benefited from one of the finest pieces of film direction I have ever seen. (If you can get to see Pride and Prejudice with the director's spoken comments, as shown on Sky recently, then it is a very worthwhile exercise.) This made-for-TV production was much lower budget, and it showed. But that does not justify some of the mean criticism levelled by others. Billie Piper seems doomed to be remembered as Dr Who's sidekick or Chris Evans' former wife, while her earlier performance in Ruby in the Smoke demonstrated that she is a very capable actress. So, too, here, and she was really let down by some less able direction within a limited shooting time-frame. Would the BBC have done it better? Probably ... but on the whole this was a fair crack at a slightly lesser known Jane Austen story, and worth a second look with a slightly less critical hat on!!!

Fanny is a poor ten-year old girl who has been sent away to live with her wealthy relatives at their home, Mansfield Park. There, her only friend is her cousin Edmond, whom she grows to love. When she is 18, new neighbors Henry and Mary Crawford come into her life; Henry has eyes for Fanny while Edmond is smitten with Mary.

This Masterpiece Theatre version of Jane Austen's novel was really disappointing. The biggest problem was the casting of Billie Piper as Fanny. Her always-disheveled, bottle blonde hair and inexplicably black eyebrows weren't true to the period and she acted too modern and low class; none of her dialogue was believable because she looked so wrong for the part. She would have been better as a naughty chambermaid than someone brought up in an aristocrat's home. Another victim of inaccurate hair and make-up was Hayley Atwell (Mary Crawford) who had a 2007 hair style and sculpted eyebrows which were lovely, but completely wrong for the time. Her casual speech and flirtatious actions would have had no place in formal Regency society.

The actors playing Fanny's aunt and uncle were too young and lacked a lord and lady's proper breeding. And the waltz danced in the final scene would certainly have shocked onlookers, if indeed it were even known at that time, but there was only pleasant reaction to the dance. All in all, this misguided film is visually distracting and sadly unconvincing.

I must admit that in most of the movie, I got irritated at Billie Piper's Fanny Price-character. Because I thought she was to childish, silly, naive and quite ignorant. But as the time went, the movie got more and more enjoyable. I found it very nice and quite interesting. And what an ending.

The ending was really romantic and sweet. And which movie is perfect any way? No one! There's not even a perfect human being on this planet, so give this movie or whatever you might call it, because we always get a second chance, so why shall it be betrayed? And many of you haven't even seen the ending of this movie. And the ending is the best part of it all. Enjoy and act like the way you should be acting, next time you are going to give a movie a review, because you might spoil it for the rest of us.

i have seen all the 6 Jane Austen movies of the 2007/08 series and at least Edmond gives a better kiss than the others (excepting the last scene from persuasion) i did enjoy this movie and liked it very much, i do not watch movies to criticize how it is made, the photography, or even the manner of speaking but i watch these movies and judge them on how they entertained me, if i enjoy the story. in this movie i was delighted in the story except i could have thumped Edmond for being so slow to see what was before him..sometimes i wonder at the slowness of the leading men in this series. i really enjoyed all the actors in this movie and thought they did a good job, i especially like the moment when Edmond realizes that he loves fanny, and then how he goes about trying to tell her...i did find some of the scenes seemed a little disjointed, a mistake of the editing department...i am glad that i bought this movie as well and am still enjoying watching today.