Pride and Prejudice (***1/2)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

November 13, 2005

I’m gonna put this is the most macho, manly way possible: I thought Pride and Prejudice was really good. At about 135 minutes, the movie is a bit overlong and the pace flagged as the movie zeroed in on its second hour, but it’s pretty fucking romantic at the end. I see a lot of movies that want to be romantic or claim to be romantic but have no idea that they aren’t. Pride and Prejudice is romantic. There are three scenes that were total knockouts: Early on when Keira Knightley had her first dance with Darcy, when Darcy and Keira argued in the rain, and a fantastic scene where Keira was in Darcy’s house looking at his marble statues at there wasn’t a single piece of artwork in that room more beautiful than she is. Three great scenes, no bad scenes, and Keira Knightley = really good movie in my book.  I’ve never read Jane Austen and I never will, so it took me a little while to understand who everyone was, why Mrs. Bennett was so eager for her daughters to get married; how to women in that time period, marrying for money and security was more important than marrying for love and it was assumed love would follow when money and security were found. What won me over was Keira Knightley’s performance as Elizabeth Bennett. Everything about her was dreamy; her beauty, her intelligence, her wit. She’s just fucking gorgeous. With today’s abundance of hot actresses in movies and TV, it’s very easy to fall in lust with whoever the piece of ass of the moment is, but you don’t come across too many mergers of actor, character and performance that just captures your heart like Keira did mine.