The malapert bookworm

I should preface this review with a disclaimer: I really love this book (by Karen Joy Fowler -- please read it!). One of the themes of the book is the importance of books in our lives -- how they can affect the way we see the world, and how the way we see the world affects the way we read books. The way in which our relationship with certain books -- and certain authors -- can be as palpable as our relationships with real people, but yet they shouldn't be confused or inter-replaced. (And Fowler is an SF writer, so there's a great subtext about SF and how it can be as "good" as other kinds of writing -- yahoo!)

So anyway, I went into this movie with great skepticism -- more, in fact, than the usual "movies-aren't-as-good-as-the-book" attitude, because the cast is way too young and way too hot (except Allegra, who's supposed to be hot). I mean -- Maria Bello as Jocelyn?!?! She's *my age* for pete's sake, while the elderly Bernadette is played by Kathy Baker, a woman in her 50s (the age of Jocelyn and Sylvia). Good grief. I was pretty annoyed at this level of Hollywood-ification.

But I forgot two important facts: In Hollywood, being a beautiful 40-year-old like Maria Bello is like being a drab 56-year-old in the real world. (Yes, someone that lovely gets pushed into the "mature actress" category.) And I also forgot how beautiful Hugh Dancy is, so I figured (rightly) that he'd be worth the price of admission (even though Grigg isn't really that gorgeous, is he?)

Anyway, I have to admit to insanely loving the movie. Part of it, I'll admit, is the environment, seeing it with my girlfriends (one of whom had also read the book), and the whole hanging-out-with-grownups vibe. I don't generally like those movies considered "chick flicks." (Beaches, ugh. Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Steel Magnolias, barf.) But if Jocelyn can learn that some SF is worthy of literary stature -- of true book-love -- then I can admit that some chick flicks are truly good and enjoyable. And this is one of them.

Bello may be less dowdy than I imagined Jocelyn, but if the character is a bit of a take on Emma, then she should be more together, more lovely than I'd pictured, right? And Baker was way less scatterbrained than the book-Bernadette, coming across as a much wiser and practical person, but that worked OK, largely because of Baker's charm.

My favorites: Emily Blunt as Prudie. We get so much less of all the characters' back stories (a necessity of film storytelling in almost any adaptation), but you don't have to read the book to see her backstory in Blunt's straight back and expressive eyes. Those eyes! So in contrast with the brittle discipline of her body, accentuated by the severe haircut and clothing. Her search for intellectual stimulation (in the book club) turns into a search for love, for friendship, and she doesn't realize it until it's almost too late. She was magnificent -- she's really turning into one of my favorite actors. I hope she gets a Supporting Oscar nomination; this was a richer performance than in Prada, for which she got a lot of awards and award-buzz. I was struck by her absolute vulnerability, inside her armor: "High school is never over." The movie didn't go into the origins of her marriage to Dean, who is not the lummox a lesser writer would have made him, but I think we see, in their reconciliation, her insecurity (why is this cute jock interested in a nerd like me?) and the beginning at least of its resolution.

Hugh Dancy was fantastic, too: Of course, he's lovely, but he's growing out of the prettiness that was so striking in King Arthur and Elizabeth I (he's how I picture Essex looking now). This is a change for the good. Better yet, he made for a very good Grigg -- just dorky enough in his calculator-watch and his bike shorts. His backstory is what  I missed most from the book, especially the watershed episode in his boyhood when his father, instead of going on a manly camping trip, detours into a mid-life-crisis-fueled visit to a college-age hippie party, from which a bewildered and unsettled Grigg is rescued by his stalwart older sisters. (We only get one glimpse of one sister on screen, played by the gorgeous and powerful Nancy Travis.) What we do get, however, works very well. If the story's central love-plot is unfortunately a bit more obvious on screen than on the page, still, the compensation is seeing the way the two characters interact and react -- Bello and Dancy do a wonderful job of playing the awkwardness of "young" love. Courtship is not always so easy, Grigg says at one point. Indeed -- and its ups and downs are the stuff of nearly every "chick flick" and "date movie." But that timeworn story is not always handled as gracefully or charmingly as here.

I find Austen books very hard to adapt -- the subtle turns of wit and character are so difficult to capture. Most of what's good about an Austen book is exactly what fails an Austen movie. Fowler wrote a brilliant book that is both about reading Austen (and much more), and is also itself a paean to Austen, a sort of modern-day "new" Austen. It's a task I would have thought impossible if I hadn't read the book and loved it myself. The movie sets a lower goal, and succeeds better than I expected. I wish the director (Robin Swicord) had done more with some things (the dogs, the Austen-ish epistolary features) and less with others (Jocelyn's attempts to matchmake seemed pretty clumsy). But the only thing I really disliked was the opening segment, in which I suppose we're meant to see a montage of harried people on cell phones (some of the our characters) as a modern-day comedy of manners. Too broad, and it didn't really fit the movie. (More suitable to Clueless, for instance, which focuses much more on the comedy and the manners.)

But overall, I can recommend The Jane Austen Book Club, both to those who've read the book and those who haven't. Its appeal isn't limited to the appeal of looking at the inimitable Mr. Darcy Mr. Dancy.