Susan Granger’s review of “Austenland” (Sony Pictures Classics)
With her highly successful “Twilight” franchise, author Stephanie Meyer demonstrated the box-office power of appealing to a primarily female audience. Now, as producer, she’s assembled a female-centric production team, beginning with director Jerusha Hess who, working with author Shannon Hale, adapted this giddy romantic comedy from Hale’s 2007 novel about a woman who is obsessed with a BBC production of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.”
Besotted with dreams of her own difficult, distant Mr. Darcy, thirtysomething Jane Hayes (Keri Russell) keeps a life-sized cardboard cutout of Colin Firth in her bedroom. After selling her car, Jane ponies up enough money to fly to England for an expensive vacation at a British theme resort called Austenland, where primly imperious Mrs. Wattlesbrook (Jane Seymour) promises every lovelorn visitor a chaste, 19th century romance with an on-staff actor. Once there, mousy Jane makes the acquaintance of crass Elizabeth Charming (Jennifer Coolidge), a wealthy American who’s never actually read Jane Austen’s literary classics but enjoys wearing “those wench dresses.” As they squeal and sashay around the drawing room in Regency Era costumes, they’re faux-wooed by various fictional suitors, including foppish Colonel Andrews (James Callis), roguish Capt. George East (Ricky
Whittle) and a dour Darcy-double, Henry Nobley (JJ Field). Disillusioned because her limited funds mean she’s known as “Miss Jane Erstwhile, an orphan of no fortune” and, therefore, cannot enjoy the same exquisite luxuries as the other role-playing bachelorettes, like Amelia Heartwright (Georgia King), who purchased a ‘platinum premium package,’ dowdily-dressed Jane finds she fancies Martin
(Bret McKenzie), a lowly Aussie stable boy/carriage driver. And, predictably, her path to true love trips her up with many troublesome cobblestones.
Making an auspicious directorial debut, Jerusha Hess previously co-authored “Napoleon
Dynamite” with her husband Jared.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Austenland” is an amiable, yet flimsy 5. Too bad it’s
not a saucier, snarkier satire.
