“Sense and Sensibility” (131 min, Rated PG for some thematic elements, partial nudity, and brief violence) 7 out of 10
There’s no question British novelist Jane Austen is an enigma, a countryside isolationist who took to writing at a young age, and by 22 had completed a good portion of her most famous novels that were released later. To this day, she is one of England’s most revered romance novelists. How could someone so detached from mainstream society have such amazing insight into social conventions she writes so convincingly about? Just think what she had she lived past 41 — or Mozart past 35?
That brings us to the latest incarnation of Austen’s second most popular works, “Sense and Sensibility” (“Pride & Prejudice” is No. 1), a work that’s been done on TV (BBC TV), but more famously in 1995’s Oscar-winning film starring a whopping cast of Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. It’s hard to compete with that, or its famed director, Ang Lee, but since the powers-that-be have risen to give us another adaptation of this revered novel, it behooves us to accept it on its own terms and not compare it to the 1995 film. Enough said on this.
In a word, “Sense and Sen...