The story so far: I recently took it upon myself to cover Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for my other online writing gig. This naturally involved reading the book in question, though I also revisited the excellent 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation to get a different perspective on the text. Now that my write-up has been published, I decided to conclude the project with a viewing of the 2005 film adaptation.

I’d heard a lot of bad things about this movie in advance, and I wasn’t expecting it to be nearly as good as the BBC adaptation, but I hadn’t seen it before and the amount of talent behind it had me very curious. Also, it isn’t like I had to go out of my way for it: The DVD had been sitting on a shelf in my family’s living room for years, still unopened.

Now, having seen the film, I can confirm that it isn’t nearly as good as the BBC adaptation. In point of fact, Pride and Prejudice isn’t nearly as good as it should have been.

I knew from the opening moments that something was off about the film. Don’t get me wrong, the camera work was very good, the production design was phenomenal, and the first act is full of those long, continuous shots that I’m so fond of. Yet something didn’t feel right, and it took me a while to get my finger on it. Finally, during one of the ballroom scenes, it hit me.

The ballroom scenes are huge and extravagant, with countless extras in elaborate costumes dancing, clapping and laughing. On paper, it sounds great. In practice, our main cast of characters is completely drowned out by all the set dressing. Even the prologue is guilty of this, with camerawork and editing that focus more on the Bennets’ home (which shouldn’t be nearly so extravagant, considering how the family’s relative lack of wealth and connections is such a huge story point) than on the Bennets themselves. Considering that the book’s main strength was in its characterization, cutting down on the characters’ screen time to such a degree was a capital error.

Of course, there’s the excuse that there’s so much story to cram into so little running time. Indeed, the story was rushed to such a degree that the crucial events collided into each other with a nearly audible “crash.” I could forgive this, if not for the truly abysmal editing. There were so many character beats, story moments, and lines of dialogue that might have been given a lot more breathing room if the film didn’t have so many shots that were needlessly drawn out and/or redundant. As it is, the actors go through most of the movie reciting their lines unnaturally fast. This really hinders the performances of all involved, especially during the first act.

In theory, this is an amazing cast. In practice, the performances could charitably be described as “hit-and-miss.” Easily the biggest disappointment came from Donald Sutherland. He played Mr. Bennet — probably my favorite character in the book — without any degree of life or humor. He took a character known for his dry wit, and played him without any wit at all. FAIL.

Faring slightly better is Tom Hollander in the role of Mr. Collins. He admirably plays a well-meaning man, who’s nonetheless an idiotic and officious toady who’s too pompous to know just how much of an unlikeable twit he is. Simon Woods also does a decent job as Mr. Bingley. He seems overly happy in the role, and hardly the brightest man alive, but that’s kinda what the character of Bingley is like. Still, easily the biggest surprise came from Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. The romantic development of Darcy is very slow, and it’s difficult to see by design, but Macfayden delivers it quite serviceably. Of course, it helped that his chemistry with Keira Knightley was smoldering at times.

As for the females of the cast, I was quite surprised to find that Jena Malone (a future Sucker Punch heroine) and Carey Mulligan (a future darling of Oscar-bait cinema) were both in the cast. Of course, Mulligan didn’t get a whole lot to do in this movie, but Kitty always did play second fiddle to Lydia. Speaking of which, I personally thought that Malone did perfectly well as the stupid and flighty youngest Bennet, even if her storyline with Wickham was incredibly rushed and her character wasn’t shown to develop at all.

Next is Brenda Blethyn, who got the character of Mrs. Bennet completely wrong. In the book, Mrs. Bennet is a totally superficial and two-dimensional character. Much as her desire to marry off her daughters is understandable, she isn’t a character we’re supposed to relate to. Yet there are a few scenes in which Blethyn seems to be trying to make the character sympathetic, which leads me to wonder why she would think to do such a thing.

Then there’s Rosamund Pike. This actress frustrates me. I saw her in Die Another Day, and I pretty much immediately fell in love with her (though I was 15 at the time, which might have had something to do with it). She’s absolutely gorgeous, yet I can’t figure out how she is as an actress because she’s in so few movies worth seeing. Her highest-profile movies after this one were Doom and Surrogates. Her next role is in Johnny English Reborn, for God’s sake. What’s more, it’s not like Die Another Day was what anyone would call a classic, either.

So now, I’m seeing her play Jane Bennet, the center of a storyline that needs far more time than this movie is willing or able to provide. Without sufficient time to examine her feelings about Bingley, her relationship with his sister, or her feelings at the apparent rejection, there’s absolutely nothing to make the character interesting. As a result, the character is pretty to look at, but otherwise unmemorable.

Judi Dench also makes an appearance, totally phoning it in as Catherine de Bourgh. Still, the casting was a blessing, as the character would totally have fallen flat if not for the Dame’s inherent gravitas. Kelly Reilly (better known nowadays as Jude Law’s fiancee in Sherlock Holmes) also appears, in the thankless role of Caroline Bingley. Both of these women — as with Lydia — suffer from having character development arcs with beginnings and middles, but no sufficient ends. Ms. Bingley in particular seems to disappear from the proceedings entirely about halfway through.

Last but not least, there’s Keira Knightley. *sigh* I got nothing for this one, folks. I don’t know what it is, but she just doesn’t have it. She’s the right age, she’s got the right look, and she’s clearly trying so hard, but she just couldn’t disappear into the role of our lead character. I think it has to do with the aforementioned line delivery problems, in which she has to give her dialogue extremely fast to cut down on the running time. However, I think another part of the problem may have been all those many times when she’s staring directly into the camera. That’s a serious pet peeve of mine in movies, as it just looks creepy. Especially when the characters don’t move, as here.

Whatever praises I give for this movie’s visuals, I have to take them right back for all the shots that are poorly staged, poorly edited, or accompanied by an overbearing score. The film also utilizes quite a few sequences to show the passing of time, most of which revolve around Lizzy. They might have been inventive or clever in any other movie, but they just come off as awkward and overlong in this one.

Pride and Prejudice was directed by Joe Wright, who later went on to direct Hanna, of all things. He shouldn’t have come anywhere near this project. Everything bad about this movie — the awkward line deliveries, the horrid editing, the poor staging, the oppressive score, and most importantly, the lack of character focus — all comes back to a director who just couldn’t get a handle on this material. It’s obvious that a lot of effort got put into this production, and it’s clear that someone behind the camera had a great passion for the text, but the execution got thoroughly bungled. The movie was just good enough to convince me that a solid feature-length adaptation of the book might conceivably be made (here’s a hint: Try going for 135 minutes or 150 minutes instead of 129), but there isn’t a doubt in my mind that this isn’t it.

Though the BBC adaptation really is very good.