Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

studioAT What with a similar film being made about Beatrix Potter not too long after/ before this film it seems a trend it emerging about the real life of beloved authors.With Anne Hathaway, Dame Maggie Smith and Julie Walters all involved you'd hope for a better film than what we actually get.Slow, dull and all in all not that entertaining, this film manages to provide us with information but seems to be lacking the fun in doing so.If you want to learn more about Austen I suggest you visit Bath instead. Or better still just read the novels. You can then draw your own conclusions about how Jane became Jane Austen.

zhongzl-kelley2014 I'm glad I didn't watch the movie with some sarcastic companion mumbling about the how it's distanced from the history, or how the lines and costumes in there are anachronistic, because not all of the audience are professionals, inspecting the movie with their pedantic X-rays. There are kids assigned to watch the movie because the teachers want them to be interested in the classic author, there are couples borrowing the DVD because they want to watch something romantic at their date. Honestly, most of the audience open their laptops, expecting a good story. If some ossified dusted scholars want some historical truth, they go to the BBC. So I'm perfectly satisfied with this brilliant piece of work, it's got twists in the plot, fervent love between two sexy intellectuals that make you sign with pleasure, and the demonstration of Jane Austin's admirable character dominated by ration, moral and firm faith in love. It's definitely the movie to go if you are teaching your child what kind of lady you want her to be, instead of Hanna Montana or Mean Girls.I've read the original version of P&P, it was a sheer torture for a 15-years-old teenager, but when I precede and encounter Mr.Darcy between Jane's gentle touch of pen, I became obsessed with it. I flung two subjects in the semester exam because I was at the part when Elizabeth was confessing her poignant misunderstandings towards poor Mr. Darcy, my heart writhed in pain because Mr.Darcy was what sensible girls always dream of :handsome, intellectually equal with Elizabeth and has a HUGE CASTLE. But it makes the departure of Tom devastating to watch, because the audience and sense the wistful romance in P&P when Jane was torn apart from her man in so disappointing a manner. I can perfectly understand the authors that fulfill the holes in their lives with happy endings, because that's where fancy originated from. In this light, the movie makes perfect sense, because every quality Elizabeth Bennet exhibited, Jane perfectly embodied them, and every thing Jane yearned for, Elizabeth had them eventually. I will not judge the acting, because it brings out the softest and most beautiful part of my nature. I'll not judge the camera angles, because it's flexible and smooth like the eyes of god. I can't judge the script either, because it doesn't abuse a syllable. If Anne Hathaway is more linear to Jane's appearance, this movie totally deserves a ten.

mere-orders I'm a big Jane Austen fan of both her books and various movies and I like the cast in other things, but I literally stopped watching this movie in the middle. It's not enough to have British accents and some period clothes. You need good writing and a compelling plot. Mildly diverting to see how they tried to show the sources of various Austen characters, quotes and plots, but really not art.Watch any BBC or Hollywood production of an actual Austen masterwork again rather than this. It's rare that I stop watching a movie and I really wanted to like it, but it was not good at all. Austenland was more fun if you want an Austen-related but not Austen movie.

Malcolm Parker Having grown up near Steventon, I have to confess I'm not familiar with the mountainous terrain that appears in parts of this film. Luckily I'm sensible enough to recognise that this isn't attempting to be a wholly accurate biographical work. It uses elements of Janes life, people, places etc. in a fairly loose way to construct a plausible work of fiction about how things might have been. Ultimately, unless you were expecting a detailed biographical work, the success of this film isn't about how accurate or inaccurate the depiction, its how well it works as a piece of drama. In my view it worked very well. So well in fact it's difficult to pick out the flaws. It was in the construction of this films Jane, that I think things didn't quite work. The critical factor in determining her future was where this would leave her and her parents financially marrying Lefroy or alternatively marrying Wisley. For some reason this critical and monumental part of the story failed to carry anything like the same sort of weight it might do in an Austen work. It almost got there in several places - the scene where she screams something about "are there no other women in Hampshire" I thought was particularly good, but instead of building and building the drama, here and in several other points throughout the film, things just sort of dissipated. My other criticism (and this may be just a male thing) was the sheer beauty of Anne Hathaway throughout. She is a fantastic actor, her performance and accent were flawless and I believe she deserves to appear in work with far greater artistic merit than generally seems to be her lot. In this role however, and I think largely due to artificial constraints of Jane's characterisation rather than Anne Hathaway's acting, she just wasn't quite ordinary enough. That may seem a strange thing to say about a fictional depiction of one of the greatest writers the world has even known, but it's not about Jane Austen's extraordinary gifts that I mean, its about how mediocre much of Austen's life was, that crucial part of the back story was insubstantial and, possibly because of the characterisation of her parents, not quite believable.