Word: austens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There comes a point when, for health reasons, one has to cease getting furious at Hollywood for mangling great novels and instead allow a movie version to stand on its own. This season's Austen fare, "Emma," adapted and directed by Douglas McGrath, borrows the book's social satire, but unwisely replaces its canny ironic bite with what in comparison resembles absurd slapstick. We can enjoy the product of this limited adaptation--funny, outrageously decorated--but it's anything but great Austen...
...movie preserves the book's plot and the setting, as we are supposed to tell from the print ads where Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow) elegantly raises a cup as if in a coffee ad. As all you Austen fans know, Emma tries to mastermind a match between Harriet Smith (Toni Collette) and the clergyman Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming), but then gets somewhat of a surprise herself. Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam), Emma's governess (Greta Scacchi), Mrs. Elton (Juliet Stevenson), and so on--all take their respective places...
Advertised as an alternative to summer blockbusters, the movie lets you feel smart for having laughed at something weighty by poking fun at the problems of class in Austen's England. In choosing his material, McGrath obviously revels in mocking the characters' indulgences, and nowhere does he have more of a field day than with the picture-book world he believes the characters inhabit: endlessly decorated lawns, trees, countrysides, even the people themselves. Characters seem absurd just walking by such a background...
Think of Emma as the overattentive hostess at the endless round of parties that constitute an Austen novel. As she speaks her wry epigrams, she brandishes a smile that suggests wisdom gaily bestowed on lesser mortals. Though it crinkles with warmth, it is exactly one shade too pleased with itself. Emma could be one of nature's noblewomen, if only she would stop trying to stage-manage other people's lives. Graceful and witty, she is a goddess whose comic flaw is that she wants to play...
...sounds just like Clueless. And it should, since last year's hit comedy was based on the same Jane Austen novel. The producers of Emma (yet another version of which will air on the A&E Network next February) must wish the release dates had been reversed: their Masterpiece Theatre-style adaptation should have been seen before the MTV-meets-Saturday Night Live parody. Won't audiences now be disappointed if Paltrow doesn't say, "As if"? McGrath, who was nominated for an Oscar writing Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen, has a ready reply: "She does...