Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice
| 13 January 1980 (USA)
Pride and Prejudice Trailers

Mrs. Bennet is determined to find husbands for her five daughters. The arrival of a new wealthy neighbor seems like the answer to her predicament. But while eldest daughter Jane catches Mr. Bingley's eye, middle child Mary has her nose stuck in a book, and youngest girls, Kitty and Lydia, chase after officers in uniform; Elizabeth, the willful, intelligent, and opinionated second daughter, is snubbed by haughty gentleman Mr. Darcy... In this class-minded society, can love triumph over pride and prejudice?

Reviews
Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
julia2702 Indeed, nothing can clear this adaptation from the iniquitous crime of ruining entirely the lively spirit in Austen's beloved work. I have never seen such a boring show in all my life, and I'm not just speaking of period dramas here. There isn't even a slightest trace of acting! As one of the critics below aptly remarked – "reading in period dress". That's exactly what it was.Practically all actors have a still and unvarying countenance throughout the series. No emotion, no real involvement comes through any of them. Bennet girls are all pretty much the same – you are left wondering why Darcy should single out Elizabeth from among the rest. Overall, I don't like the choice of Elizabeth Garvie for this role. She is simply not attractive! The actress who played Jane would do a better job in her place, I think. There was at least some bright spark in her eyes. Why anybody should have singled out Mr Darcy, apart from his being a rich guy, also remains a big question to me. Someone's comment below that Rintoul is acting like a Terminator movie hero made me burst out laughing. Even the 2005 P&P, which was a modern-day disappointment, made me care for the protagonists to get together – though for different reasons than Jane Austen described.Bland, insipid, dull. There was only one moment when my bored expression changed – it happened during Darcy's first proposal scene, when he arrived at Hunsford parsonage with his doggy :) I spluttered with laughter at the ridicule of this. But the doggy was left outside and my final hope for the liveliness degree to rise was irrevocably destroyed. The proposal itself wasn't much different from Mr. Collins's avowal of his affections.I can't find one good reason to give this more than one star, even though I'm such a fan of the original story. As Lady Catherine would say, I take no leave of you, 1980 adaptation. You deserve no such attention.
bellestrange Pride and Prejudice is one of my favourite books but this series might just be, not only the worst adaptation of P&P, but one of the worst adaptations of anything. The acting is absolutely horrid. The fact that so much of the dialogue is taken directly from the book is completely ruined by the fact that the actors only seem to be blankly reciting the lines, rather than actually bringing any feeling or nuances to them. In the end, I felt nothing for any of the characters. Mr. Darcy only had one facial expression and tone of voice, and Elizabeth possibly two or three. If the 2005 movie is a poor match to the 1995 miniseries, this is still infinitely worse.
Qanqor I just don't know what planet some of these reviewers are from. I am agog that anyone can think this version vastly superior to the 1995 A&E version, or truer to the book or truer to the characters. Did we watch the same production? This one took all *sorts* of liberties with the book! Generally minor, pointless, and usually for the worse. One wise reviewer was dead-on in pointing out the wrongness of the change of Lizzy running to Darcy on getting the news about Lydia, instead of him walking in on her. But there are many lesser examples. How about the change of both scene and person saying the line about Mary having delighted everyone long enough? What did THAT achieve? At least when the A&E version added something, you can see why they did it, and I generally agreed with most (not all) of it and saw it as being in the spirit, if not the letter, of the original.Look, this is a very good version of P&P. I would rate it as the 2nd-best I've seen. The A&E is unquestionably the best, but this is much better than the 1940 (now *that* one took liberties!) and light-years ahead of the 2005 (don't get me started!). I didn't mind that the production values weren't up to the lush 1995, I'm sure they were very good for their time and place. Lizzy was pretty good. I thought Mrs. Bennett was excellent. Mr. Collins was too transparently avaricious in his first scene but after that I thought he was very good. Lydia and Mary were quite good (although Mary seemed a bit too happy and not stern enough; my take on her was always that she retreated into her books because she found so little happiness in social life, that it was more a defense than a joy, but here she seems to take real joy in it). I liked the Gardiners, they came off as appropriately steady and sensible. And, of course, I very much like that, as a miniseries, they take the trouble to really go through the whole plot and not skimp on anything.But there are, to be sure, flaws. I thought the father was poor. He has no mirth. He should have a twinkle in his eye and clearly find amusement as he makes his sarcastic comments about peoples' follies; as someone else here pointed out, he just comes off as grumpy. It's supposed to be a real change in him when he's all serious and unhappy about the Lydia affair, but we don't really see the change here because he's been so serious throughout the whole story. I also didn't really like Jane or Kitty. Kitty just somehow seems too old. And Jane just didn't convince me. About anything. That she was this rather innocent, almost naive person in the way she was always ready to think the best of *everyone*. That she really did love Bingley. Even that she was seriously ill when she was supposed to be seriously ill. It is very important that she really is seriously ill, not just has a little sniffle (if she just has a little sniffle, which is all it really comes across as here, then the mother is NOT foolish for devising the go-in-the-rain plan, and the father IS foolish for mocking his wife on that count. Which breaks both characters)But perhaps the biggest disappointment to me was Darcy. I really tried very hard to like him. But I just couldn't. He isn't *likeable*. Ever. More than in any other version, more than in the book, it just seems absolutely *impossible* to believe the servant when she goes on about what a great guy Darcy is. The point of the story is supposed to be that it is largely Elizabeth's prejudice that sees him in such a bad light, but as a viewer who actually gets to see him objectively, I too find him quite unpleasant. He never really *does* warm up, even after the failed-proposal scene. So, in the end, I don't find myself at all pulling for him and Elizabeth to get together. There's no spark, no chemistry, no feeling that they really do belong together in the end. And anyone who didn't find *that* in the book read the wrong book.(and don't think it's because I find Colin Firth sexy. As a heterosexual male, I promise you, I do not find Colin Firth sexy)The result is, that for four episodes, I was quite engrossed and entertained by this version, but ultimately the final episode left me flat. Because it is here that the ultimate get-together of Darcy and Elizabeth fails to score.
sheepie87 Pride and Prejudice has been my favorite book since I was eleven years old, and I've seen every other adaptation of it--even taken a class on Romantic Comedy, in which P&P was included. However, I was determined to take this version on its own merits and try not to compare it to the other versions. Those don't matter as much as its trueness to the book in spirit and content.This is what I told myself when I put the DVD in. During the first scene, my hopes were dashed--Mary brings the news of Bingley? They just cut out the great opening banter between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet! Really, it's all downhill from here.The greatest complaint is that the people behind this movie completely sucked the life out of the story. This is a comedy of manners, people, not solely a love story. It's about human character, and here, the characters have no life at all. Look at Mr. Darcy: Aie! He looks like a walking corpse with a burr up his you know what. It seemed as if every line was painful to utter and that he was bored to death. Elizabeth has altogether no wit and shows a strange contradiction regarding her family: She whines and pleads with Jane to get better faster so she can go home! What!?!? Whining, selfish creature! She then comments with a sign of satisfaction how good it is to be home, and coddles her mother too! Agony. Because of these flaws in writing/acting, the ending is improbable, even laughably ridiculous. Sorry, did the casting director think that chap playing Wickham was a hottie? Youch.Did anyone notice how awful all of the grand houses looked? I mean, since Darcy has ten thousand pounds a year (that's a LOT of money) he could at least have the stone on Pemberley cleaned up a bit. It was all stained and icky. *shudder*If I detailed everything that was wrong with this, I'd be here for hours. I know many of you love it dearly, but I'm sorry, I see nothing to love. I see a dried-out husk of an adaptation of the most brilliant book ever.