01. I now understand the love for James McAvoy. Funny how first encountering him as a shirtless goat-man with a penchant for luring young girls into his dark and dirty cave lair can put you off a person. He was all kinds of adorable in this, but then again I am rather fond of rogues.
02. Is it lame that whenever Jane was writing, all I could wonder was how well her penmanship matched the Jane Austen font?
03. I kept hearing “Mr. Wisley” as “Mr. Weasley”, particularly when coming from both Maggie Smith and Julie Walters. When Lady Gresham came over to have a tête-à-tête with Mrs. Austen, I was convinced it was a parent-teacher conference between Professor McGonagall and Molly Weasley.
04. I think I adore it when people refer to their loved ones being beheaded during the French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror as them having had a date with Madame La Guillotine.
05. The kid who was completely “besotted” with LeFroy was rather adorable.
06. Okay, can people cut it out with the pathetic fallacy already? I mean, I’m very fond of it when it actually adds to the scene in a not-so-obvious way or, conversely, when it’s so over the top that you can’t help but mock it*, but when the camera panned out from Jame’s face at a dinner party to the window pane that was suddenly assaulted with wet foreshadowing from above (a.k.a. rain), I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and think “Oh dear, I bet this is where we find out that Cassandra’s betrothed has perished in a distant land.” Guess what information was then imparted to Pops Austen via a letter delivered to the dinner party. So unnecessary.
* I am thinking of that scene in The Robe where the centurion asks a random man what his name is, he replies “Judas”, and then out of nowhere there is a huge crash of thunder and a bolt of lightning. That’s how you do it if you’re going to be over the top about it.
07. Speaking of Pops Austen, are James Cromwell (wrong, he’s American) and Jim Broadbent the only elderly British gentlemen capable of playing aging husbands in fathers in British films? It’s either one or the other in any film with British people. Surely there’s someone else they can throw into the mix occasionally.
08. I know I say this every time I see a biopic, but my measure of a biopic is whether or not it has managed to interest me sufficiently in the work of the person being depicted. After all, the success and influence of the work done by the subject of a biopic is the reason we’re interested in that person after all these years, yes? But oh how Becoming Jane fails this particular litmus test. I have absolutely no more interest in reading Austen now than I did prior to seeing the film. Which reminds me that I have yet to begin my annual aborted reading of Pride and Prejudice for this year. I swear one day I’ll finish that book, but then again I just can’t bear to start it again.
09. I thought this movie was overall decent, but truthfully I’d rather just sit through Sense & Sensibility again.