Chick Flick indeed! Guys, take your best buddy to see this movie. Tell him, "It's really cool, dude, even though there aren't any eviscerations."

An enjoyable if fairly predictable film.

Neither trite nor pandering, and that's what makes the film better than most of its peers.

For a visual bonus, Hugh Dancy appears in bike shorts as the lone male Jane-ite.

Overall, The Jane Austen Book Club is an admirable mix of heady and fluffy, the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy that needn't make filmgoers ashamed of what they wished for.

The entire enterprise ultimately seems designed to turn Austen into a self-help guru.

This is Austen lite, but pleasantly so. You can hardly fault a movie that fashions itself around a consummate writer whose keen sense of humor and gift for fully realized characters have resulted in countless screen adaptations.

The domestic and romantic turmoil all gets resolved a bit too neatly to seem realistic, but realism isn't the goal; this is comfort food, plain and simple, and achieves its modest goals in nearly effortless fashion.

Everyone is given their due and dignity in this funny, sexy, humanist film that, if it is a chick flick, gives the genre a good name.

Swicord has a playful sense of humor and a good ear for dialogue, and the movie pleasantly accomplishes what it set out to accomplish.

The film's characters are lively, the women all look terrific (the guys do too, for that matter), and its many romantic story threads weave into artfully told tales of love lost and found.

Cast is first-rate all around, unafraid to play up the annoying, insensitive or self-pitying aspects of their nonetheless likeable characters.

Such a well-acted, literate adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler's 2004 best seller that your impulse is to forgive it for being the formulaic, feel-good chick flick that it is.

Swicord has enough savvy to conjure up a terrific cast that compensates for her rote direction.