I didn't entirely hate this Mansfield Park, the photography, costumes and locations are stunning, and the acting particularly from Johnny Lee Miller, Lindsay Duncan and Harold Pinter is very good. Sadly, it didn't work. I will say the book is not very easy to adapt, none of the Austen books are, but Mansfield Park more so, and Fanny Price is difficult to get right in characterisation. Effort could have gone into capturing the spirit of Fanny's character from the book, however her character here is pretty much the opposite of her novelistic counterpart, rebellious in alternative to shy and thoughtful. Frances O'Connor is alluring and manages not to be too forced in her acting, but this is not the Fanny I know and love. The other characters are rather dull and devoid of the personalities that made them so compelling in the book. The pace can be sluggish at times and the music is repetitive and over-bearing, while the writing is stilted and takes you out the era and the story is muddled and because of omissions like the Grants there is not enough of the themes here that shaped the original story so well. Overall, pretty and well-acted, but dull and probably the most disappointing Austen adaptation I've seen thus far. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor) comes from a poor family. Her mother married for love. She was sent to live with her aunt's family the Bertrams in Mansfield Park at the age of 10. She's looked down upon by everybody except the son Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller). Sir Thomas travels to their Antigua plantation with the oldest son Tom. The rest of the family is joined in Mansfield by Henry (Alessandro Nivola) and his sister Mary Crawford (Embeth Davidtz). Edmund becomes infatuated with Mary. The Bertram sisters Maria and Julia both vie for Henry despite the fact that Maria is already engaged to the dull Rushworth.

This movie takes slavery on as a central theme. Also Fanny Price is a thoroughly modern woman as well-read head-strong thinking woman. Her abolitionist views are ahead of her times. This adds something much more than the usual Jane Austen interior romanticism. I'm sure some Austen fans hate a lot of the changes but it works for me. It adds a higher moral idealism to the romance.

England, 1806. The photography and production design are exquisite. What a far cry this is from Hollywood's remakes of the classics in the 30s and 40s, with everything shot in black and white on a studio sound stage. Majestic landscapes in full bloom. And what must it be like to live in Cornwall and bear the brunt of all those westerly gales? Mendocino County write large.

The performances are top notch as well. I don't know how closely the characters resemble Jane Austen's, never having read the novel, but independent of her text they can stand on their own two feet. And not just the performances but the casting. As Fanny Price, Frances O'Connor looks and acts like a properly British Jessica Harper. Embeth Davidz is paralyzing cool and pragmatic. I can't figure out just who plays Fanny's mother in Portsmouth but she's emblematic of the poor around the world, pinched and weathered. I had no idea that Harold Pinter was an actor as well as a writer.

I can't say that the plot is gripping. Well, I guess it is, in a way. The problem is that it's so similar to other lavish soap operas in which everybody is in love with the wrong person for reasons of affection or social status -- vide, "Far From the Madding Crowd," "Gone With The Wind," and on and on. Dickens worked such themes into his novels as well, but he added a dash of social commentary, of engagement with the world outside the mansion. And he played recklessly with the English language: "Oh, JOY! What a reversal of desolation." Austen seems sedate by comparison.

Patricia Rozema is a winning director, hitting all the right notes. No fancy directorial fireworks, no razzle dazzle, and the stylistic touches come at just the right places, as in the epilogue, in which characters freeze into tableaux just long enough for a summary of their fates.