Usually, reading the book first spoils the movie, but that's not the case with "The Jane Austen Book Club." The ensemble comedy-drama is about six people reading the books of the infamous British author, and they actually talk about the books. So if you haven't read "Pride and Prejudice," let alone "Northanger Abbey," you might get a little lost.
That's the best thing about writer-director Robin Swicord's film, that she doesn't dumb it down to appeal to the non-readers in the audience, and creates a celebration of Austen's work that's more immediate and eloquent than the recent Austen biopic "Becoming Jane."
But what did spoil the movie for me -- a little -- was that I had read the original "Jane Austen Book Club" novel by Karen Joy Fowler. Fowler's book finds all sorts of wry and playful ways to riff on all things Austen, making for a superb entertainment.
This is where Swicord does dumb it down a little too much, making simple and overt (and sometimes strained) parallels between the characters and the books. Jocelyn (Maria Bello), for example, is a happily unmarried dog owner who tries to match-make two other members of the club, the newly-divorced Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) and the cheerful Austen novice Grigg (Hugh Dancy), oblivious to her own feelings in classic "Emma" style.
Emily Watson, meanwhile, is sort of like Anne from "Persuasion," except her Captain Wentworth is her husband, separated not by class but by the fact that he's a basketball-loving jock while she's a fragile bookworm. The fact that the movie also piles on a hippie mom (Lynn Redgrave) for her as well as a dalliance with a high school student is a bit much.
Rounding out the group (and not getting enough screen time, frankly) are Sylvia's free-spirited lesbian daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace) and the group's matriach, Bernadette (Kathy Baker), who seems to be in the autumn of a life fully lived, six ex-husbands and all.
The group meets six times over the course of the movie, each discussing a different book, and these are easily the best scenes in the movie. Swicord has a great ear for dialogue that's sharp but believable, and the way the conversation elides from the books to the readers' lives and back again is very entertaining and revealing. Your own book club will look a little dull by comparison.
Honestly, I would have loved a "Book Club" movie that was just those six conversations, stretched out to feature length, where the characters' backstories are alluded to. Instead, those backstories are given the bulk of the movie, and they're pretty uneven.
The Watson subplot is just full of contrivances, right down to the part where the uptight woman who wears her blouses buttoned up to her throat finally loosens up and wears a sundress. Brenneman's Sylvia, left by a philandering husband (Jimmy Smits), is certainly believable, but the screenplay goes in a direction that yearns for a tidy resolution rather than an emotionally honest one.
Having said that, the courtship between the strong-willed Jocelyn and the infectiously enthusiastic Grigg almost saves the movie. Both characters could be played as types -- the dog handler who needs men to "obey," the dot-com millionaire who likes science fiction -- but both Bello and Dancy are great actors who make the characters interesting, a little surprising and even abrasive, but ultimately very likable.
"The Jane Austen Book Club" is far from a failure, especially if it sends curious fans of the movie back to Austen's original six books. I just wish Swicord had gone back to Fowler's original novel once or twice more to see why it works so well.