There and Back Again

Pondering: There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

If Jane Austen were alive, the movie Becoming Jane would have surely killed her. This has got to be the worst period romance movie, to date. I give it a million yawns and constant gagging. It is a collage of cliches from every romantic story and one that is too predictable that it made me cringe every time I realize what cliche it is about to depict. The typical: larger than life boy hates reclusive but very smart girl and vice versa, which results to witty banter between the two in the library, at the park and while dancing. Then the accidental brush of the hand happens, and next thing you know girl loves boy but can’t have him because he’s not the right man. Boy defends girl from cruel society or family and she realizes he also is deeply in love with her. Then there’s the inevitable let’s-elope-but-let’s-not-because-I-love-you-too-much-to-allow-you-to-abandon-your-responsibilities (which he or she did not know he or she had). Come on! Jane Austen herself was capable of being predictable in her stories, but even she would have turned in her grave with this one.

Anne Hathaway, prettiest girl in Hollywood but my god, can the girl be reminded every second that she needs to have an English accent throughout the movie? The girl just can’t do period movies, let alone English period movies using colloquial English. She can’t even get the posture right! She does this awful thing with her mouth - swallows or pouts or I don’t know, can’t describe it - that just irritates the hell out of me. It’s worse than Keira Knightley’s constant overbite (or is that underbite). Anyway, it’s probably a cute mannerism if you are playing the ditsy PA to a devilish fashion editor, but not as a Victorian miss, ok? She just didn’t work for me, sorry.

I wish I could say that the lovely James McAvoy saved the movie but even he was getting on my nerves with this one. The poor man, for all his greatness could not save the film from being just amazingly forgettable, in my opinion. Maybe the Oscars snubbed McAvoy’s wonderful performance in Atonement as punishment for making Becoming Jane.

A shame for James and Jane.