Pride and Prejudice (2005) revisited

When I went to see the film in theaters a few months, I think I was so distracted by my swooning over Keira Knightley, whom I have a bit of a crush on, that I couldn't clearly see the many flaws.

Watching Knightley's performance again, I can hear that her line readings, while not exactly flat, are inadequately nuanced. I think that perhaps as an actress, she's out of her league. In particular, I could detect too much Estuary in Knightley's accent, which is all wrong for the role- why didn't she get a dialect coach? There's a reason the British Academy didn't nominate her.

I think too many critics, probably men, are confusing "charming young lady" with "really good actress". I'm not saying she's a bad actress, but just that she needs a lot more training- there's no better evidence than her shite performance in Domino. I'd know she'd be pissed off to hear someone say that, but she needs to be pissed off, so she gets motivated to be better.

I also discussed with the persons I was watching the film with how much we felt the film was miscast. One thought Rosamund Pike would have made a good Lizzie, but the other and myself disagreed. We all seemed to agree that Clive Owen and Ion Gruffudd, Knightley's co-stars in King Arthur (not a great film but better than this P+P) , would have made better Mr. Darcys, or a Mr. Darcy and a Mr. Bingley, or a Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. They are far sexier and masculine in my estimation.

And Judi Dench even is miscast, seeming nothing so much as an 18th century incarnation of Jean Pargetter.

I also noticed on this viewing that this Mr. Darcy is a total wuss. Twice he confesses to Lizzie "I love you" and I just had to blurt out "I don't believe you!". Whereas Knightley quite believably shifts from favor to disfavor during the course of the film, I realized there's no reason for her to do so, and she winds up making Lizzie look like an idiot!

Now, before the film came out, Keira gave an interview with the London Telegraph where she said

"Filmmakers tend to go for that slightly more androgynous look these days, which is lovely, but one of the most romantic things in the world is a manly man"

but, excuse me, Matthew Macfadyen seems to be exactly part of that whole generation of Generic Boring White Guy that I think Keira is talking about, guys who are indistinguishable from each other by their lack of personality.

For example, I remember Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez very vividly from Resident Evil, but their white guy co-stars are a blur in my mind. And it's not as if it was such a great film that it could afford bad casting decisions as well.

Same goes for Angelina's co-stars in the Tomb Raider films, Daniel Craig and Gerard Butler. I know their names now, as a result of the first being cast as the new Bond (wrong choice), and the second because of Phantom of the Opera, but their performances in the Tomb Raider films were bad and utterly forgettable.

People these days seem so much less interesting than they used to be. It took me a long, long time to distinguish or even register the cast of American Pie. But back when I was a kid, there was no way that one could confuse Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, and Anthony Michael Hall. I know they were playing "types" but so were the American Pie kids, but I still got them confused.