I am a huge Jane Austen fan. "Pride and Prejudice" is one of my all-time favorite books, and Austen is in my top-3 favorite authors (along with William Faulkner and Kurt Vonnegut...in no particular order.)
So I know what the audience for a movie like this one wants.
Here's the premise: a late-30-something spinster (Keri Russell) is absolutely obsessed with Jane Austen. She has had terrible romantic relationships and seems to have a difficult time coping with the modern world.
Then she hears about Austenland, a kind of role-playing theme park wherein the guests can become absorbed in the worlds of Emma, Mr. Darcy and the Dashwoods. She thus cleans out her savings account and heads off to England.
At this point, the movie is fairly engaging. Her obsession with Austen is a bit over the top, but that's alright.
The movie begins to fail when it actually arrives at Austenland. The tone is broad comedy, and there are more than a few crude jokes (usually involving Best In Show actress Jennifer Coolidge.) This is where the director makes a serious misstep. Literature fans in 2013 are reading Jane Austen for a reason. And it isn't to get humor one can find on Two and a Half Men. The moments of Georgian-era innocence juxtaposed with modern crassness simply do not work. They are jarring and completely break the mood.
After seeing it, I thought about this movie for days. And I kept coming back to the same thought - how much better it would have been if they had played it straight. Basically, once Russell's character gets to Austenland, have the movie turn into the equivalent of a Jane Austen adaptation. Then one of the key messages of the movie would have been driven home more effectively: what is reality? That way the movie could be more of an existential puzzle...is what we're seeing real, or part of the theme park? Does it matter? Are our own lives more tangible than our thoughts?
I really, really wanted to love this movie. But in the end, it was a misfire.
Mr. Darcy would agree.
Jeffrey Dale Starr is a world traveler, oil painter, and owner of mobile software company Purple Falcon.
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