Wentworth, meanwhile, has become a captain in the navy. Anne has never gotten over Wentworth, but she’s now a spinster, resigned to devoting her life to caring for her sisters and her sister’s children. When both novel and movie open, it’s eight years later. But Anne’s friends and relatives convinced her that she should not throw herself away at 19 on a man who had no money and few prospects, and so she broke Wentworth’s heart. Anne Elliot - rich, pretty, and charming - was once madly in love with the penniless young sailor Frederick Wentworth. Persuasion, directed by Carrie Cracknell and with a screenplay by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow, loosely follows the plot of Austen’s original. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark It seems to have no reason to exist- and the reason it does eventually offer up is frankly insulting to everyone involved. Taken on its own, purely as a movie, Persuasion is simply bad.
Unforgivably, it makes a mess of one of Austen’s most romantic moments, undercutting the iconic letter-writing scene until it’s lost all internal logic and, with it, all emotional power. Where Austen’s original is devastating in its restraint, this film is broad in its humor, shallow in its emotions, and ham-fisted in its characterization. Instead, she winks at the camera with her best Jim-from- The Office smirk, as if to say, “Aren’t we all in agreement that this is charming?” We aren’t.Īs an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, it’s a disaster. Johnson’s easy screen presence has been the redeeming factor of many a bad movie before this one, but in the starring role of Anne Elliot, she does nothing to lighten Persuasion as it swings on its emotional pendulum from dour to dull. It apes Bridgerton’s cheeky anachronisms (“A 5 in London is a 10 in Bath!”) as if its audience should consider them revelations rather than weak jokes that by now are more than tired.Īs a showcase for Dakota Johnson, it’s a letdown. While it aims for the candy-coated Regency pastiche that Bridgerton made fashionable, it’s too stolidly convinced of its own virtues to revel in the sudsiness that renders Bridgerton so satisfying. It’s hard to overstate just how bad Netflix’s Persuasion is, and in how many ways.Īs an imitation of Netflix’s hit Bridgerton, Persuasion is a pale copy.
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