Becoming Jane may fudge the facts, but it finds the more compelling emotional truth.
Comment
08/22/07
Becoming Jane (2007)
58
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:133
Fresh:77
Rotten:56
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: Although Becoming Jane is a well-crafted period piece, it lacks fresh insight into the life and works of Jane Austen. The film focuses too much on wardrobe and not enough on Austen's achievements.
Rated: PG [See Full Rating]
Runtime: 2 hrs
Genre: Romance, Historical, Theatrical Release, Romantic Comedy, Writers, Romances, Authors
Theatrical Release:Aug 3, 2007 Limited
Box Office: $18,602,895
Synopsis: BECOMING JANE is based on an incident in the life of the beloved writer Jane Austen, and follows the real-life romance that inspired her classic novels. Like many of her heroines, Jane (Anne... [More]
Starring: Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Julie Walters, James Cromwell
Director: Julian Jarrold
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Reviews for Becoming Jane
There's something refreshingly spare and rough-hewn about this big-screen experience.
08/22/07
If you're a Jane Austen fan, your sense and sensibility will demand you check this out.
08/18/07
The central idea in Becoming Jane is that "Pride and Prejudice" may have been autobiographical. Not a bad idea, except that the film plays more like a new adaptation of that book than as an outright examination of Austen's inspiration.
08/17/07
... it seems uncharitable to deny poor Jane Austen this chaste, hypothetical affair
08/17/07
The film's romantic conventions are not nearly so bright or inspiring as what Austen became, in her own words.
08/16/07
Take Jane out of the equation -- replace her with any of your basic period-piece-romantic-costume-drama heroines -- and you're left with mere trifle.
08/14/07
While Becoming Jane is too much of a prologue to the writing Austen, it is an impeccably crafted imagining of a young woman seeking love at a time when women were so often 'better than their circumstances.'
08/14/07
Not only is that a huge stretch of the facts, it makes for a dull and overly familiar melodrama.
08/14/07
Top CriticMostly just a second-rate Jane Austen story.
08/10/07
Think of this scenario as a smart, witty, well-acted romance novel that has sprung to life on the big screen with some restraint and a decent amount of dignity.
08/10/07
The reality of love's disappointments enriches the film's heroine, who never married in real life, and brings a 200-year-old figure into living focus.
08/10/07
Hathaway never makes us think the woman could write anything more complex than a diet book.
08/10/07
Top CriticTaken as speculative fiction, it is thoroughly satisfying.
08/10/07
Early on, a character remarks that "Wit is the most treacherous talent of all" and based on the evidence contained within, the minds behind "Becoming Jane" are among the least treacherous people that you are likely to meet.
08/10/07
This never rises above a date movie, but it's functionally literate (the lovers have some pleasant banter about the realistic merits of Tom Jones) and features a fine supporting turn from Ian Richardson.
08/10/07
Hathaway delivers a fine British accent and high spirits as Austen.
08/10/07
Although the film does eventually give up its referential conceits, it comes far too late in the game to salvage any real emotional investment in the characters or their plight.
08/10/07
Becoming Jane becomes a rather ordinary, though sporadically entertaining, game of dress-up.
08/10/07
Top CriticBecoming Jane attempts to please the purists and the dreamers, but only results in disappointing both.
08/10/07
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