Pride & Prejudice (Critics Rave Reviews)
Here are some P&P reviews from the P&P Official Website, which I thought I'd compile and post here all the rave Reviews from film critics for ya'll to read:
Enjoy Reading!
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Stephen Holden
November 11, 2005
"Makes you believe in true love, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. Satisfyingly rich. The sumptuous new screen adaptation has so much to recommend it."
The sumptuous new screen adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" has so much to recommend it that it seems almost churlish to point out that its plucky, clever heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, played by Keira Knightley, is not exactly the creature described in the 1813 novel.
The second of five well-brought-up but impecunious Bennet sisters, whose fluttery mother (Brenda Blethyn) desperately schemes to marry them off to men of means, Elizabeth prevails in the novel through her wit and honesty, not through stunning physical beauty. Among the five, the belle of the ball is Elizabeth's older sister, Jane (Rosamund Pike), who is as demure and private as Elizabeth is outspoken and opinionated.
But because Ms. Knightley is, in a word, a knockout, the balance has shifted. When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her. Her radiance so suffuses the film that it's foolish to imagine Elizabeth would be anyone's second choice.
Once you've accepted this critical adjustment made by Joe Wright, a British television director in his feature film debut, "Pride & Prejudice" gathers you up on its white horse and gallops off into the sunset. Along the way, it serves a continuing banquet of high-end comfort food perfectly cooked and seasoned to Anglophilic tastes. In its final minutes, it makes you believe in true love, the union of soul mates, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. For one misty-eyed moment, order reigns in the universe.
If the depth and complexity of the movie can't match those of the five-hour British mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth that was shown on A&E a decade ago, how could they, given the time constraints of a feature film (128 minutes, in this case)? But in a little more than two hours, Mr. Wright and the screenwriter, Deborah Moggach, have created as satisfyingly rich and robust a fusion of romance, historical detail and genial social satire as the time allows.
Read more here...
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Carina Chocano
November 11, 2005
"Exhilarating. With Outstanding Performances, 'Pride & Prejudice' Is A Joy From Start To Finish."
Does the thought of Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet give you pause? Jane Austen's smartest, toughest and most independent-minded heroine was last portrayed by Jennifer Ehle in the excellent 1995 BBC miniseries, the one that established Colin Firth as the Mr. Darcy to end all Mr. Darcys. There, Lizzie's intelligence was made to carefully hack its way through pin curls and silly Regency frippery like a machete-wielding Amazon explorer. But in Joe Wright's exhilarating new version, the first feature film adaptation of "Pride & Prejudice" in 65 years, Lizzie has been liberated from period fashion victim-hood, scruffed up a little, and let loose on the wily, windy moors. So what if the style seems a touch anachronistic -- it's close enough to the spirit and the letter of the novel, and makes up for the differences in energy and fun.
Read more here...
USA TODAY, Claudia Puig
November 11, 2005
"![[image]](http://www.prideandprejudicemovie.net/assets/images/reviews/star.gif)
"! "Supremely Entertaining!
Bewitches The Viewer Completely And Incandescently With An Exquisite Blend Of Emotion And Wit."
Who would have guessed that the world needed another remake of "Pride and Prejudice"? Yet despite multiple previous incarnations and the cries of protest from diehard Colin Firth fans, this "Pride & Prejudice" is a stellar adaptation, bewitching the viewer completely and incandescently with an exquisite blend of emotion and wit.
Director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach extract the essence of Austen's clever dialogue, fashioning a supremely entertaining saga of amorous adventures.
What emerges on screen feels contemporary while preserving the nature of the character study. "Pride & Prejudice's" transcendent love story will captivate viewers - even diehard Austenites.
Wry, beguiling and lushly romantic, the film is gorgeously shot, with some of England's most dazzling estates doubling for the novel's Pemberley and Netherfield Park manses.
The sumptuous musical score intensifies the film's vitality.
Keira Knightley's spirited Lizzie Bennet is a delight, but the movie belongs to dark-haired, blue-eyed Matthew Macfadyen, who plays Mr. Darcy, one of literature's great romantic heroes.
Read more here...
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Roger Ebert
November 11, 2005
""!
"One Of The Most Delightful And Heartwarming Adaptations Made From Austen Or Anybody Else."
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Everybody knows the first sentence of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." But the chapter ends with a truth equally acknowledged about Mrs. Bennet, who has five daughters in want of husbands: "The business of her life was to get her daughters married."
Romance seems so urgent and delightful in Austen because marriage is a business, and her characters cannot help treating it as a pleasure. "Pride and Prejudice" is the best of her novels because its romance involves two people who were born to be in love, and care not about business, pleasure, or each other. It is frustrating enough when one person refuses to fall in love, but when both refuse, we cannot rest until they kiss.
Read more here...
THE BOSTON GLOBE, Wesley Morris
November 11, 2005
""! "A Jaunty Romantic Comedy That Leaves Us As Incandescently Happy As Its Characters! Exhilaratingly Made!"
Everyone in the bouncy and whooshing new version of "Pride & Prejudice" appears to be having a great time. Everybody except Mr. Darcy. But he'll come around. Jane Austen's novel has been rejiggered into a jaunty romantic comedy that leaves us as incandescently happy as its characters.
That sort of excitement is what Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and her sisters dream of. Mrs. Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) just wants her five girls married off to men who can support the hell out of them. Love is a luxury the family can't afford. But the Bennet girls, for the most part, are idealists in spite of their mother. They must get it from their taciturn and protective father, played by the sterling Donald Sutherland in his least evil part in years. The girls take their cues from him while running from their breathless, batty mum.
Rosamund Pike, as Jane, the eldest, fairest Bennet daughter, and Simon Woods, as Mr. Bingley, the unassumingly rich, magnificently carrot-topped whippersnapper who falls for her, could be two besotted freshmen at any college. They leave each other and the movie in a tizzy. Their crush, of course, is complicated by the matters of caste and propriety that threaten to break them up.
The spirit of this version feels fresher and more youthful than previous editions. The youngest Bennets, Kitty (Carey Mulligan) and Lydia (Jena Malone), are more cuckoo than ever. Malone is particularly hilarious as the most Southern-sounding Bennet and the one least likely to remain a virgin.
Read more here...
THE WASHINGTON POST, Stephen Hunter
November 11, 2005
"Keira Knightley Is A Vast Force Of Nature! She Just Rules The Screen!"
The hate that dare not speak its name is, of course, love. This is an ancient principle in romantic comedy or romantic romance - it's summed up in the phrase applied by others when a man and woman begin their relationship by spitting venom at each other: "Just get a room!" - and it seems to derive mostly from Jane Austen's fabled "Pride and Prejudice," in which Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy begin as fiery opponents and end up as married lovers.
Read more here...
More rave reviews links:
Enjoy Reading!
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Stephen Holden
November 11, 2005
"Makes you believe in true love, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. Satisfyingly rich. The sumptuous new screen adaptation has so much to recommend it."
The sumptuous new screen adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" has so much to recommend it that it seems almost churlish to point out that its plucky, clever heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, played by Keira Knightley, is not exactly the creature described in the 1813 novel.
The second of five well-brought-up but impecunious Bennet sisters, whose fluttery mother (Brenda Blethyn) desperately schemes to marry them off to men of means, Elizabeth prevails in the novel through her wit and honesty, not through stunning physical beauty. Among the five, the belle of the ball is Elizabeth's older sister, Jane (Rosamund Pike), who is as demure and private as Elizabeth is outspoken and opinionated.
But because Ms. Knightley is, in a word, a knockout, the balance has shifted. When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her. Her radiance so suffuses the film that it's foolish to imagine Elizabeth would be anyone's second choice.
Once you've accepted this critical adjustment made by Joe Wright, a British television director in his feature film debut, "Pride & Prejudice" gathers you up on its white horse and gallops off into the sunset. Along the way, it serves a continuing banquet of high-end comfort food perfectly cooked and seasoned to Anglophilic tastes. In its final minutes, it makes you believe in true love, the union of soul mates, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. For one misty-eyed moment, order reigns in the universe.
If the depth and complexity of the movie can't match those of the five-hour British mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth that was shown on A&E a decade ago, how could they, given the time constraints of a feature film (128 minutes, in this case)? But in a little more than two hours, Mr. Wright and the screenwriter, Deborah Moggach, have created as satisfyingly rich and robust a fusion of romance, historical detail and genial social satire as the time allows.
Read more here...
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Carina Chocano
November 11, 2005
"Exhilarating. With Outstanding Performances, 'Pride & Prejudice' Is A Joy From Start To Finish."
Does the thought of Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet give you pause? Jane Austen's smartest, toughest and most independent-minded heroine was last portrayed by Jennifer Ehle in the excellent 1995 BBC miniseries, the one that established Colin Firth as the Mr. Darcy to end all Mr. Darcys. There, Lizzie's intelligence was made to carefully hack its way through pin curls and silly Regency frippery like a machete-wielding Amazon explorer. But in Joe Wright's exhilarating new version, the first feature film adaptation of "Pride & Prejudice" in 65 years, Lizzie has been liberated from period fashion victim-hood, scruffed up a little, and let loose on the wily, windy moors. So what if the style seems a touch anachronistic -- it's close enough to the spirit and the letter of the novel, and makes up for the differences in energy and fun.
Read more here...
USA TODAY, Claudia Puig
November 11, 2005
"
"! "Supremely Entertaining!Bewitches The Viewer Completely And Incandescently With An Exquisite Blend Of Emotion And Wit."
Who would have guessed that the world needed another remake of "Pride and Prejudice"? Yet despite multiple previous incarnations and the cries of protest from diehard Colin Firth fans, this "Pride & Prejudice" is a stellar adaptation, bewitching the viewer completely and incandescently with an exquisite blend of emotion and wit.
Director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach extract the essence of Austen's clever dialogue, fashioning a supremely entertaining saga of amorous adventures.
What emerges on screen feels contemporary while preserving the nature of the character study. "Pride & Prejudice's" transcendent love story will captivate viewers - even diehard Austenites.
Wry, beguiling and lushly romantic, the film is gorgeously shot, with some of England's most dazzling estates doubling for the novel's Pemberley and Netherfield Park manses.
The sumptuous musical score intensifies the film's vitality.
Keira Knightley's spirited Lizzie Bennet is a delight, but the movie belongs to dark-haired, blue-eyed Matthew Macfadyen, who plays Mr. Darcy, one of literature's great romantic heroes.
Read more here...
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Roger Ebert
November 11, 2005
"
"!"One Of The Most Delightful And Heartwarming Adaptations Made From Austen Or Anybody Else."
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Everybody knows the first sentence of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." But the chapter ends with a truth equally acknowledged about Mrs. Bennet, who has five daughters in want of husbands: "The business of her life was to get her daughters married."
Romance seems so urgent and delightful in Austen because marriage is a business, and her characters cannot help treating it as a pleasure. "Pride and Prejudice" is the best of her novels because its romance involves two people who were born to be in love, and care not about business, pleasure, or each other. It is frustrating enough when one person refuses to fall in love, but when both refuse, we cannot rest until they kiss.
Read more here...
THE BOSTON GLOBE, Wesley Morris
November 11, 2005
"
"! "A Jaunty Romantic Comedy That Leaves Us As Incandescently Happy As Its Characters! Exhilaratingly Made!" Everyone in the bouncy and whooshing new version of "Pride & Prejudice" appears to be having a great time. Everybody except Mr. Darcy. But he'll come around. Jane Austen's novel has been rejiggered into a jaunty romantic comedy that leaves us as incandescently happy as its characters.
That sort of excitement is what Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and her sisters dream of. Mrs. Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) just wants her five girls married off to men who can support the hell out of them. Love is a luxury the family can't afford. But the Bennet girls, for the most part, are idealists in spite of their mother. They must get it from their taciturn and protective father, played by the sterling Donald Sutherland in his least evil part in years. The girls take their cues from him while running from their breathless, batty mum.
Rosamund Pike, as Jane, the eldest, fairest Bennet daughter, and Simon Woods, as Mr. Bingley, the unassumingly rich, magnificently carrot-topped whippersnapper who falls for her, could be two besotted freshmen at any college. They leave each other and the movie in a tizzy. Their crush, of course, is complicated by the matters of caste and propriety that threaten to break them up.
The spirit of this version feels fresher and more youthful than previous editions. The youngest Bennets, Kitty (Carey Mulligan) and Lydia (Jena Malone), are more cuckoo than ever. Malone is particularly hilarious as the most Southern-sounding Bennet and the one least likely to remain a virgin.
Read more here...
THE WASHINGTON POST, Stephen Hunter
November 11, 2005
"Keira Knightley Is A Vast Force Of Nature! She Just Rules The Screen!"
The hate that dare not speak its name is, of course, love. This is an ancient principle in romantic comedy or romantic romance - it's summed up in the phrase applied by others when a man and woman begin their relationship by spitting venom at each other: "Just get a room!" - and it seems to derive mostly from Jane Austen's fabled "Pride and Prejudice," in which Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy begin as fiery opponents and end up as married lovers.
Read more here...
More rave reviews links:
You can read more P&P reviews here.
Read more below...
86% Certified Fresh (from all film critics) on Rotten Tomatoes and 88% "Like" from audiences (on their site)...here's 35 (out of 38) Top Film Critics film reviews...
-*4 stars* "Supremely Entertaining! Bewitches The Viewer Completely And Incandescently With An Exquisite Blend Of Emotion And Wit." (Claudia Puig, USA Today)
- "Exhilarating. With Outstanding Performances, 'Pride & Prejudice' Is A Joy From Start To Finish." (Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times)
- "Makes you believe in true love, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. Satisfyingly rich. The sumptuous new screen adaptation has so much to recommend it." (Stephen Holden, New York Times)
- *4 stars* "One Of The Most Delightful And Heartwarming Adaptations Made From Austen Or Anybody Else." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)
- *4 stars* "A Jaunty Romantic Comedy That Leaves Us As Incandescently Happy As Its Characters! Exhilaratingly Made!" (Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe)
- "Keira Knightley Is A Vast Force Of Nature! She Just Rules The Screen!" (Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post)
- "Dare I say that even Jane Austen herself would have delighted in the final triumph of Ms. Knightley's quick-witted Elizabeth in this film? Yes, I do, and all the highbrow and middlebrow cinephobes of the world be damned." (Andrew Sarris, New York Observer)
- "As historically authentic-looking as Pride & Prejudice is, it has far more invested in emotional authenticity -- you feel engaged every moment." (Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com)
- "Like the classic novel itself, the movie brings a certain sadness when the end has come and there is no more to watch." (Susan Walker, Toronto Star)
- "A joy to behold." (David Edelstein, Slate)
- "For the uninitiated, I can't imagine a better introduction to this classic." (Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle)
- "This is a playful Pride, cuddly and cute and all lush English pastures, stunning sunsets and regal manor homes." (Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel)
- "The film is faithful to its source material, but not in a rigid, stodgy way. It's the rare adaptation that should please purists and dilettantes alike." (Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger)
- "Listen up, guys, have I got a flick for you: It's all about money, sex and slammin' babes in saucy-wench get-ups, and it goes down in the same country that gave us Led Zeppelin and the Clash." (Kyle Smith, New York Post)
- "Seeing the splendid new version of Pride & Prejudice can be hazardous to your health: There's a very real danger of swooning." (Jamie Bernard, New York Daily News)
- "Knightley is the best thing about this enjoyable adaptation, immediately owning the wardrobe and the words and the weather as if she were born to the manner -- and manor." (Michael Booth, Denver Post)
- "It's all compelling, real and fresh." (Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press)
- "Joe Wright, in his feature-length directorial debut, accommodates the genteel gauze without neglecting the well-aimed stings." (Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News)
- "Wright and Moggach open the windows on P&P and let it breathe." (Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer)
- "If the filmmaking is somewhat less perfect than in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, Austen fans will nonetheless delight to see their favorite characters brought to life." (Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic)
- "As with so much of this Pride & Prejudice, you wish it would never end." (Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury)
- "Pride & Prejudice is highbrow movie- making, in the finest sense of the term." (Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune)
- "It's an exuberant film adaptation of real personality -- lively, coltish, imaginatively conceived for a fluid camera." (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune)
- "Of Austen's novels, none is more beloved than this one, so it's good to see it once again brought to the screen with the pride which it deserves." (James Berardinelli, ReelViews)
- "If young audiences respond to it at all -- as I am sure they will -- it will be because Wright has brought out the vigor in Austen's romance in a way that the other adaptations I've seen never quite accomplished." (Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor)
- "Knightley brings Austen's book to glorious, pulsating life." (Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
- "Director Joe Wright, working from a screenplay by Deborah Moggach, has brought both romantic sweep and rich verisimilitude to Austen's story." (Gene Seymour, Newsday)
- "At a time when we seem to be inundated by one gruesome, depressing movie after another, it's reassuring to see an elegant man's pride and a stubborn woman's prejudice reach the lushly realized assertion that love conquers all." (Rex Reed, New York Observer)
- "A movie in which the search for love all but pulses with the excitement of uncertainty." (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly)
- "Director Joe Wright also coordinates a delightfully cohesive acting ensemble." (Jessica Winter, Village Voice)
- "Even the most rabid Janeites must allow that director Joe Wright, 33, has given Austen's novel a beguilingly youthful spin without compromising the novel's late-eighteenth-century manners." (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone)
- "Anyone coming to the movie fresh and not demanding a chapter-by-chapter adaptation will respond to the pic's emotional sweep, sumptuous lensing and marvelous sense of ensemble." (Derek Elley, Variety)
Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1153077-1153077-pride_and_prejudice/reviews/?type=top_critics
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