Film Review: Pride & Prejudice and Zombies

Zombie-slaying Bennet sisters worth cheering for. Zombies, not so much.

Victorian era badassery.
Victorian era badassery.

More influenced by 2005’s Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightley than the classic piece of literature by Jane Austen or the works of George A. Romero, Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, is a mediocre popcorn flick. It’s not as campy or cheeky as I’d had hoped, nor as serious and emotional as it could be if it avoided being the former. Despite the PG-13 rating, there’s enough genre blending jokes and tame action to make the first hour an enjoyable piece of escapism. Unfortuantely, an apparent inability to conclude the story whilst providing a non-anticlimactic finish makes the last 30 min a bore — an uninspired CGI-filled bore. Yet PPZ can be taken in its entirety as a relative success. The failings don’t take away from what most folks will expect from a sci-fi period piece romance (not sure the appropriate genre?) based on a popular piece of spoof fiction.

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Film Review: Austenland

No sense and no sensibility: Jane Austen as uninspired rom-com

Jennifer Coolidge, Keri Russell, and Georgia King are living the Jane Austen dream in Austenland.
Jennifer Coolidge, Keri Russell, and Georgia King are living the Jane Austen dream in Austenland.

With Austenland, first-time director Jerusha Hess (one half of the husband/wife team that wrote Napoleon Dynamite) has turned Shannon Hale’s popular novel into a dippy, run-of-the mill, predictable romantic comedy. The novel’s fans may be the only audience for this dud, and even then their enjoyment no doubt will stem purely from the curiosity of seeing how the story translates to the screen. Everyone else would be better entertained by staying home and reading an actual Jane Austen novel. Continue reading “Film Review: Austenland”