Without that connection, I couldn’t care one way or another about the outcome. First, I wasn’t moved into believing there existed a burning love between Austen and Lefroy. The problem with Becoming Jane is two-fold. The story is told in a cause and effect linear fashion each experience felt by Austen creates a new wrinkle in her actions – some for the better, some for the worse. Mostly director Julian Jarrold does an adequate job spinning the story and capturing the feel of the late 18th century. The bulk of the movie is then centered squarely on their interactions – midnight trysts, sneaky flirts and the breaking of norms set by their families and society. Instead, she becomes smitten with a dashing young man from the city, named Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), who has been sent to live in the country by his tyrannical uncle (Ian Richardson). Wisley (Laurence Fox), a nondescript and boring gentleman that Jane finds no interest in. They have meager belongings and Jane is expected to marry for status, as her sister is doing. Austen (James Cromwell and Julie Walters, respectively), her sister Cassandra (Anna Maxwell Martin) and her brother Henry (Joe Anderson). The household consists of her parents Reverend and Mrs. Mostly it is movie for die-hard lovers of Jane Austen or women seeking inspiration for either independence or true love.Īnne Hathaway plays the 20-something Jane as she is growing up at her family home in the country. It is meant to showcase how and why the choices Austen made, or had made for her, molded her into the great novelist many believe she is. Austen and lends some credence into her acclaimed novel Pride and Prejudice. Out of many possibilities (very little is known about her life), I suspect this is the closest, as it is based on a few surviving notes penned by Ms.

Becoming Jane falls headfirst into that problem: it’s a biography about Jane Austen - a person I care little about set in the 1700’s - a time period I care even less for.īecoming Jane is a fictional biography of Jane Austen put forth by writers Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams. And depending on the type of movie (biography, historical event) they tend to get long winded and boring. Depending on the time frame they’re portraying, they need to remain true to the past - there isn’t a lot of room for error or creative liberties.

The innkeepers 2011 mpaa rating