Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This movie SEEMS to be Mansfield Park. The characters have all the right names, the action has a superficial resemblance to that of the novel, but there all similarities end! This is a very modern Mansfield Park, regardless of the early 19th century setting. Viewers are caught up in a tale of the evils of slavery and the value of women's scholarship. Not exactly the focus of the novel! There are some redeeming features. The costuming is beautiful; Mr. Rushworth, Julia, and Maria are gratifyingly self-absorbed and absurd; the differences between the Price and Bertram households are well-drawn. Austen fans will enjoy quotes from Fanny's writing: they are taken from the early stories of Austen herself. However, the makers of this movie have made Fanny Price a very different sort of creature from the novel. Blooming and beautiful, sometimes sharp-tongued, she has little in common with the character in the novel. The director has chosen to introduce elements not present in the novel. Sir Thomas, for example, due to a family business in trading slaves (never mentioned in the original), has gone from a dignified, rather stuffy but honorable man in the novel, to a degraded and rather disturbing man in the film. In the movie, he looks Fanny up and down as if she is a slave for sale, and arranges the famous ball of the novel as a way of "selling" her in marriage. And having brought in the anti-slavery subplot, the director simply dismisses it at the end, saying "Sir Thomas eventually gave up his interests in Antigua." Sharply lacking is any of the satiric eye Austen cast on society. We are given the melodrama, but little of Austen's sharp wit. Very few of Aunt Norris' snobby ways have made it into the movie; the great scenes involving the "improvements" at Sotherton are missing. Fanny's brother William is missing entirely. Why bother to even mention this is based on an Austen novel? There is little enough resemblance.