Sense and Sensibility

Grade: C-

I don’t think Jane Austen was aware that she’d be inventing a popular romcom cliché when she released her book Sense and Sensibility in 1811. It ends with a tense farewell of sorts from two prospective lovers, followed directly by a “wait a minute, it’s not what you think” realization for a character, which sends them running to catch up to them, and they finally end up together. This was my first-ever exposure to any version of Sense and Sensibility. The highest praise I can give it is it started off worthless and I almost walked out less than half an hour in, but became less worthless.

The plot can basically be distilled down to: two sisters from a large family are abandoned and ghosted by the guys they like — and when they finally do hear from them again, the men are engaged to different women. I bet there’s an iteration of this story that I could get on board with, but I found this attempt to be mostly fat and fluff. I had no objections to any performances, particularly the two leads. I’d previously seen Daisy Edgar-Jones in On Swift Horses, Twisters, and Where the Crawdads Sing, but Esmé Creed-Miles as her sister was new to me. Both have chemistry and commitment. Fiona Shaw also makes an impression. I’d call her a scene-stealer if I felt like there was something to be stolen.

An English teacher could use any typical Austen line for a sentence diagram assignment. Her sentences are lengthy, often contain many clauses, qualifiers, and verb phrases, and rarely go where I expect when I hear the first few words. The score has a recurring theme that had me mentally humming the next hypothetical musical phrase that never arrives. I wonder if that means it’s derivative of a pop song that I know, or if it just put me into “music consultant” mode.

I can imagine Austen aficionados eating this movie up, and since it’s rated PG, I wouldn’t be surprised if it eventually found its way into English Lit classrooms studying the source material. Though I thought it was bad, it’s not badly made. I liked the sets, costumes, and locations, and as bored as I was most of the time, it wasn’t because the dialogue or action was dragging. It actually moves along well. It just didn’t take me anywhere I felt like going.

By the end, it’s a case of “I see what you’re doing, and I can appreciate what you’ve accomplished, but it’s not for me.” I’ve gotten more enjoyment out of researching the book and Austen herself than I did watching this movie earlier today. But I’m glad I didn’t walk out. My grade may look like a negative one, and it is, but here, it started out as one of the lowest, and got a bit higher.

Grade: C-