Pride and Prejudice

On A Scale of One to Awesome: Delectable

Pride and Petulance

In all honesty, I liked Pride and Prejudice. I thought it was a smart and witty film based on a book I’ve never really cared to read. Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) is a proud and spunky young female who doesn’t much care for marriage for the sake of marriage and her sister Jane (Rosamund Pike) is lovely as well, but the rest of her family is absolutely dreadful. For whatever reason their parents remain unwed and can’t agree on a single matter, but live together and have harbored five children, three of which should not be let out into the open world. The mother (Brenda Blethyn) is absolutely obsessed with her daughters getting married to any man who pays a passing glance at one of them. The father (Donald Sutherand) just doesn’t care, which is nice, but when its revealed that he’s a sniveling little girl at the end of the movie, you lose a lot of respect for this man. Then there are the three sisters who pride themselves in being petulant and unnerving, except for the anti-social one who is still annoying. Then there are the four men who wander into these girls’ home and pretty much take over the whole movie. Naturally the girls fall in love with theses gents at first glance because you cannot have a true British romance without this gem. From my first glance at the film cover I knew where the movie was going and who Elizabeth (Knightley) was going to end up snogging. Mr. “Daresay” (Matthew Macfayden) is by far the most pretentious and unlikable character in the movie until about halfway in, which is about the same time you realize this characterization is true for most of the other characters. These men are remarkably good at being creepy and they of course demonstrate this ability throughout the movie. Enough hating. It wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I found myself rather giddy towards the end of the movie where the romances spread their petals and allowed glorious butterflies to land on them and do what butterflies do. The way in which the characters were coupled with one another was absolutely genius. The ballroom dancing was quite irresistible. With the exception of the more annoying characters, which I could easily tune out, I was quite pleased with this film and even considered picking up the novel. Picking it up. Not reading.