The Jane Austen Book Club.

"The Jane Austen Book Club's light, slight and clever entertainment is occasionally too-clever, but the cast's performances and [Robin] Swicord's sense of tone give it just enough charm to work," writes Cinematical's James Rocchi.

"I have to admit that I found writer/director Robin Swicord's adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler's popular novel pretty often charming despite it being not my bag, baby, and despite my [Amy] Brenneman phobia," confesses Premiere's Glenn Kenny.

"The Jane Austen Book Club isn't any better or worse than the recent Becoming Jane, a fantasy of Austen's youthful love life," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Like the other movies and television projects in a Jane Austen boom that continues to gather momentum, it is an entertaining, carefully assembled piece of clockwork that imposes order on ever more complicated gender warfare."

Updated through 9/23.

This is "a widget carefully engineered to comfort, console and sell like hot cakes since it was but a gleam in the author's eye, and Swicord doesn't mess with the formula," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

"[T]here's a difference between connecting to a writer's work and reading too much of yourself in it, and the banal film version of Fowler's book crosses the line six too many times," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

"The movie is a celebration of reading, and oddly enough that works, even though there is nothing cinematic about a shot of a woman (or the club's one male member) reading a book," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Such shots are used as punctuation in the film, where they work like Ozu's 'pillow shots,' quiet respites from the action. The only drawback to them from my point of view was that all the characters seem to be reading standard editions - not a Folio Society subscriber among them."

"You can't outright hate a movie that stars Maria Bello (even as the capable singleton who can't commit) or the excellent Emily Blunt (even as the nervous Nellie unable to see the good stuff right under her upturned nose) or Kathy Baker, predictably cast as the much-married port in a storm," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. "As for me, I eagerly await the mad bitches of Nicole Holofcener's next movie."

"It was love and money that Austen wrote about, because, as she herself observed, what else is there? The second in that equation is acutely absent from the problems of these affluent northern Californians, and it's too bad," writes Michelle Orange at the Reeler. Nonetheless, "Time was clearly taken here to do better than fine with material that had a sizeable no-brainer audience built right into the title. It's an effort as touching (if not anachronistic) as that taken to sit down and write a letter - those critical time capsules so rarely rendered tactile anymore, so rarely labored over with one eye on personal history."

"There's nothing particularly stylish about Book Club, which won't lose much in translation to the smallscreen," writes Dennis Harvey in Variety. "But it's expert in matters more crucial to the source material: managing a highly eventful narrative in brisk terms without seeming rushed; drawing moderately complex characters and conflicted relationships with economy and feeling. In those regards and others, the pic is much more satisfying than recent femme-centric adaptations The Nanny Diaries or Evening, let alone the pandering, formulaic likes of Because I Told You So." And Anne Thompson profiles Swicord.

"What would Jane do?" asks Sean Axmaker at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Write more nuanced characters and a less contrived script than this, I'm sure."

At IFC News, Matt Singer finds it "so thoroughly anti-dude for most of its running time that the only sensible male reaction to it is guilt."

"The self-deluded, Lifetime fantasy of Swicord's film can be felt from the outset," writes Paul Schrodt at Slant. "Each character's story conveniently dovetails with an Austen novel, as they all superficially peck away at the parallels between their own woes and those of characters in the books."

"Swicord's literary sense isn't exactly Camille Paglia; her movie is less 'literate' than it is almost frighteningly ill-cinematic," writes Armond White in the New York Press.

"If this one doesn't find an audience and/or spawn The Arthur Conan Doyle Book Club, The Bronte Sisters Book Club, and so-on spinoffs for different demographics, I'll eat my hat and read Mansfield Park again," writes Robert Cashill.

"The Jane Austen Book Club is both a testament to Austen's continued relevance and a fine example of classroom particulars converted into entertaining banter without losing any of its oomph," writes Brandon Fibbs at cinemaattraction.

Online listening tip. Swicord and Hugh Dancy are guests on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Liz Hoggard talks with Dancy for the Independent.

Update: "Throughout The Jane Austen Book Club, a clear, if bewildering blueprint emerges," writes Emily Condon at Reverse Shot. "It goes something like this: an emotional arc starts to swell, the action nears climax, and then just before it gets there, the camera cuts to something whimsical or silly. Repeatedly executing this pattern, Swicord (who wrote and directed) undercuts nearly every scene that has the potential to resonate deeply just before the moment where catharsis would (i.e. could) occur."

Update, 9/22: IndieWIRE interviews Swicord.

Update, 9/23: Swati Pandey talks with Swicord and other major players for the LAT.

Posted by dwhudson at September 21, 2007 1:34 AM