Parents' Guide to

Mansfield Park

By Nell Minow, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 13+

Wonderful book adaptation with strong female protagonist.

Movie PG-13 1999 112 minutes
Mansfield Park Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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age 17+

Based on 15 parent reviews

purplecows
purplecows Adult
June 11, 2021
age 18+

Hollywood filthy crap...again!

The storyline is scattered and the whole movie is rather boring. The acting is subpar and the whole movie seems to be more along the lines of a B film. There are questionable scenes throughout the movie and the sex scene is explicit! This movie should not have a PG-13 rating. It should have had an R rating. I wish I had read the reviews before having started to watch this trash called Mansfield Park.

This title has:

Too much sex
Too much swearing
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
2 people found this helpful.
Frances M.
Frances M. Adult
June 24, 2023
age 18+

Contains shockingly violent images

I was really shocked as this movie contains explicit images of sexual violence and physical violence. I never would have expected this. If I did know I wouldn't have watched this movie. It is not accurate to the novel. It seems to go in for shock value. Why can't they stay true to the book instead of making things that will appeal to "modern audiences"!

This title has:

Too much violence
1 person found this helpful.
See all 15 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor) is from a large and very poor family. When she's a young girl, she's invited to stay with rich relatives as something between a servant and companion. She is befriended by her cousin Edmund but ignored by his dissolute older brother Tom and his selfish sisters, neglected by their parents, and bullied by her aunt, also a poor relative under their care. She grows up reading everything she can and doing her best to get along with everyone. Henry Crawford and his sister Mary, both wealthy and attractive, come to stay nearby. Omni-seductive, they are both weak-willed and manipulative. They charm everyone but Fanny, creating many crises of honor and reputation.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (15 ):
Kids say (7 ):

This is not your mother's MANSFIELD PARK. Director Patricia Rozema has effectively removed the book's frail and mousy -- if resolutely honorable -- heroine and replaced her with some amalgam of Austen's feistier characters plus a dash of Austen herself. Then she throws in a bit of Jo March, Susan B. Anthony, and even Scarlet O'Hara for good measure. The movie version's heroine is far more cinematic than the Fanny Price of the book, and the adaptation works remarkably well. Less successful is the attempt to import 20th-century sensibility on issues such as slavery (Fanny's wealthy relatives own slaves in the West Indies) and some wild anachronisms (Fanny lies casually on her bed while she talks to her male cousin; neighbor Mary Crawford even more casually smokes a small cigar).

The movie is sumptuously produced. Australian actress Frances O'Connor is terrific as Fanny. To use one of Austen's favorite words, she is "lively," but she also is able to show us Fanny's unshakable honor and dignity. Playwright Harold Pinter is outstanding as Lord Bertram. One of the great moral crises of the book is whether the young people should put on a play (Answer: They should not because it would create too great an intimacy). But Austen never shied away from having characters make ineradicable moral and social mistakes, and most of her books feature at least one couple who runs off together without getting married and suffers some serious consequences. Perhaps in frustration over the difficulty of making those actions seem real to today's audiences, or perhaps simply as a way of making a classic work seem unstuffy, this movie has more implicit and explicit sexuality than we have seen in other movies based on Austen's books (except maybe Clueless).

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about some of the issues raised by the movie, including the family's dependence on slaves in the West Indies to maintain their luxurious lifestyle. What do you know about this time period? How do you imagine you would have felt about slavery had you lived then?

  • Talk about the limited options available to women that led Fanny's cousin Maria to insist on marrying a foolish -- but wealthy -- man. How have gender roles changed since this time period? What is our modern perspective on Fanny and Maria? How is it different from how many would have viewed them in their own time?

  • Are period films appealing? What techniques do filmmakers use to transport us back in time? Are some techniques more effective than others?

Movie Details

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