Austen’s Tale Retold, Sort Of

By Patrick Hickey Jr.

For all of you Jane Austen fans out there looking for the one movie to quench your need to find out everything you ever wanted to know about the amazing female...
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Austen’s Tale Retold, Sort Of

By Patrick Hickey Jr.

For all of you Jane Austen fans out there looking for the one movie to quench your need to find out everything you ever wanted to know about the amazing female author, it’s not going to be found in “Becoming Jane.� While you will have a good time sitting through the film, the feeling that it could have been something much more special is hard to avoid.

A more fictitious attempt to fill in the blanks of a woman’s life that has reveled in the unknown for quite sometime, writers Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams, both of whom made their big-screen writing debuts with this film, decided to take the film on a surreptitious journey through Austen’s writing career that eventually wound up focusing more on her desire to fall in love than anything else.

Making a huge social commentary on the rudimentary laws of inheritance in the 19th century, which forced young women to marry rich men to financially help their ailing families, Austen, played by Anne Hathaway [Devil Wears Prada, Princess Diaries] looks to find a man that will both satisfy her need for emotional and physical sustenance while helping her mother and father, played by James Crowell [Babe, The Green Mile] and Julie Walters [Harry Potter, Calendar Girls] pay the bills. However, in her attempt to do so, she falls in love with the charismatic and charming Tom Lefroy, played by James McAvoy [Chronicles of Narnia, Wimbledon], who indoctrinates her in the euphoric intoxication of love, with both of them breaking each others hearts numerous times in the process, all while traveling through some of the most gorgeous scenery in the United Kingdom. While a bit drawn out and tediously paced at times, this process however is where we see the meat of the action in “Becoming Jane� and is where we see the blooming of a beautiful on-screen chemistry between Hathaway and McAvoy that more than makes up for the ups and downs in the plot that may agitate some movie-goers.

However, the biggest problem in the film by far is its predictability. Everyone knows Austen dies alone at the age of 41 and having her come so close to love on so many different occasions with this one man that seems to have been made especially for her literally expends rational belief and patience. Trying perhaps to explain how an unmarried woman could write so passionately about love, “Becoming Jane,� does do a more than venerable job of fictitiously filling in the blanks of the great author’s life and putting her career in content, but falls flat on its Victorian face when trying to put everything together into something that is completely enjoyable. Never feeling as natural as the solid performances of Hathaway, McAvoy, Cromwell and Walters, “Becoming Jane� forces the viewer to suspend their belief in a setting that is realistic and vivid as can be, proving that great on-screen chemistry and beautiful cinematography can never make up for a mediocre script.