Pride & Prejudice (PG, 2005)

Elizabeth Bennet is self-directed and stubborn. While she's a good girl, looking after her four sisters, trying to appease her mother (Brenda Blethyn), and doting on her daddy (Donald Sutherland), she also wants more than marriage to a boring man who happens to have money. She's destined to find her match in Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen). They meet at a ball near her family home, Darcy being a guest Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) and his sister Caroline (Kelly Reilly). Their arrival in town sets the Bennets, especially the bubbly Mrs., into a tizzy, as the girls are looking for wealthy husbands, since their own respectable but small family estate is set to be inherited by the nearest male heir, Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander).

PRIDE & PREJUDICE is punctuated with tinkly piano fills and golden-lit fields, and salvaged by Keira Knightley's remarkable charm. She's well-suited to play Elizabeth. In the usual Austen pairing off, designated couples are defined, divided, and brought back together. Upright sort Bingley ("I'm not a big reader, I prefer being out of doors") falls for Elizabeth's bland sister Jane (Rosamund Pike), and Darcy starts squabbling with Elizabeth. He broods and grumps, she's given to pensive rhapsodies, twisting round and round on a rope swing in the family barn, the image slowed down to make sure viewers note her daunting loveliness. Darcy certainly does -- again and again, even as he does his best to resist, by disparaging the locals ("I find the country perfectly adequate") and convincing Bingley to abandon Jane.

Though their volatile romance is the basis for Austen's class critique, it's a romance, and Elizabeth must come to realize not only that she is attracted to this difficult fellow but also that he's generous and tender, perfectly adequate boyfriend material, and only a bit oppressed by his own relative, the ferocious Lady Catherine (Judi Dench). Still, the film follows Austen's shape without Austen's sharpness. The tinkly piano annoys, the expansive landscapes look romantic. And Elizabeth can make the sentimental choice at last, when she actually falls in love with her monied, much desired object.