Austenland (2013)
Directed by Jerusha Hess
Obsessed with the BBC production of "Pride and Prejudice", a woman travels to a Jane Austen theme park in search for her perfect gentleman.
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Mr. Darcy, Austen’s dashing, debonair creation from Pride and Prejudice, represents the perfect man to Jane, and she won’t settle for a lesser man.
Not able to find a man who lives up to Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy, she’s remained single, hoping for 19th-century-style romance.
Now, as a single thirtysomething, she still holds on to the Austen ideal of a perfect romance, and would rather watch the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice than interact with an actual man in real life.
Since Stephanie “Twilight” Meyers is a producer on Austenland , the following question is fair game: Why are readers who fangirl out about Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” embraced or applauded while devotees of whatever-that-sparkly-vampire-dude’s-name-was are chided?
She’s an Austen super-fan: Also prominent in that apartment is a cardboard standee of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in the BBC Pride And Prejudice miniseries, and the words “Darcy Was Here” spelled out in wooden letters above her bed.
Some channel her with success (“Clueless,” an “Emma” update, and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” a “Pride and Prejudice” homage, as well as the “Sense and Sensibility”-lite novel, “The Three Weissmans of Westport”), but attempts to recapture her wit, insight into behavior and gentle romance face an uphill battle.
Some channel her with success (“Clueless,” an “Emma” update, and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” a “Pride and Prejudice” homage, as well as the “Sense and Sensibility”-lite novel, “The Three Weissmans of Westport”), but attempts to recapture her wit, insight into behavior and gentle romance face an uphill battle.
There, she and the other guests, all women, will don sumptuous gowns, gather for tea, jaunt about the gardens, and volley epithets with hunky actors playing chivalrous gents right out of Emma.
Also a plus is scruffily handsome Bret McKenzie—the Kiwi funnyman of the folk duo Flight of the Conchords who won a 2011 Oscar for his song from "The Muppets"—as Martin, the estate's twinkly-eyed handyman who pitches forbidden woo with Jane.