Two very different adaptations of books about Victorian England…
Love and Friendship…Most critics really, really love this movie (it has 98% on Rotten Tomatoes), and like most anything that has near-100% status, it’s actually only okay. It’s very funny in parts—it’s Whit Stillman (who’s like a stuffier Wes Anderson without the level of creativity) adapting Jane Austen’s novel “Lady Susan”—and Kate Beckinsale is good enough to make you rethink your opinion of her, but it’s still only so-so and a little forgettable after you’re done watching it. Grade: B-
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…Seth Graham Smith’s genre mash-ups are actually fun and better written than you’d expect, but so far the film adaptations (this and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) don’t really get his tone. [I just hope they don’t mess up his best work–“Unholy Night”–which imagines the three wisemen story as an R-rated adventure spectacle.] Long stretches of this movie go by without wit or any really clever tweaking of Austen or zombie tropes, and the film’s somewhat political theme (that the upper-class seem oblivious to the plight of most people, and will keep their code of manners even as the world burns around them) gets not just lost but somewhat overturned by an ending that dehumanizes that same lower class. Still, the beginning is pretty good and Lily James is a star to watch. Grade: C+