Movie Night: Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Saturday is Movie Night at Chez Kal most weeks (welcome to middle age...), and due to my desire to get Wifeypooh out of the house so I could finish cleaning by myself (one can only take so much "Oh, and why didn't I think to look under the couch cushions for this half-eaten bag of Cheetos?" sarcasm), I made the mistake of sending her to the movie store to pick the evening's viewing.

You see, it wasn't even her turn. The last movie we rented was Memoirs of a Geisha, and unless you think I'm a completely whipped girly man, there's no way you could confuse that one for a Kal Movie choice. So it should've been my turn to pick out the movie, which means something with a) Arnold Schwarzenegger, b) young busty lasses who seem to misplace their shirts, or c) lasers, or some combination thereof.

So what did she come back with? Yep. Pride and Prejudice. Great literature costume drama. Oh, kerfuffle.

Don't get me wrong. This is a lovely movie, with good casting (I was particularly smitten with Rosamund Pikes' Jane, the oldest Bennett daughter), beautifully filmed and well acted, but man. Here's the problem: when Wifeypooh brought it home she suggested I was free to call Brotherdear and see if he wanted to come over and watch some revolting piece of horror-movie downstairs (possibly involving a bottle of scotch). So put a call into Brotherdear, and went to Saturday church; hopes all full of alcohol and really cheese horror movies.

Spoke to him again when we got back from church. Unfortunately for me, Brotherdear had a previous engagement he was unable to break; so no "Exorcism of Emily Rose" for me. And, in a two-fer, if I slept through this one, after conking out during Memoirs, I was toast.

Thanks to spectacular acting, though, I was saved, and managed to stay up through the entire movie! Was it the subtle and textured portrayal of the pained Mr. Darcy? Pike's absolutely shining playing of the buoyant and guileless Jane? Donald Sutherland's sublime underplaying of the father inflicted with five girls? No - it was rather the authentic British accents which made portions of the movie nearly incomprehensible.

Look, I speak English as well as the next guy. Well, even better than the next guy, if the next guy is your typical Boston cabbie. I love the King's English, and don't even mind the affected late 18th century manner of speaking. It's that I just can't understand it. Particularly when spoken conversationally with background music going on. I felt like I need to turn on the "for the hard of hearing" option on Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, where the announcer yellingly A-NUN-CI-ATES all the words. Jeez, you limeys: open your mouths when you talk!

Wifeypooh was having the same problem, so we turned on the subtitles. That worked, but also made the movie harder to fall asleep during. Which, on balance, is a good thing, as this was the best adaptation of Austen's canonical novel I've ever seen. Okay, okay... it's also the first one I've been able to watch from start to finish without falling asleep. Okay, okay: so I've never even managed to finish the novel, either...

Anyway, big shout out to Keira Knightley, Rosamund Pike, Don Sutherland, and Dame Judi Dench who can scare the crap out of you just by standing up - now that's a woman. Wonderful movie. Blah blah blah. It still would've had me dreaming of large women (okay, who gets the reference?) in fifteen minutes had I had not to actually read the whole thing. We'll give "Pride and Prejudice":



4 of 5 Sandra Bullocks!

(as you know, the Sandra Bullock scale was devised to rate a movie's sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score represents a movie's a) stupefying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage.)

(And this being said, Pride and Prejudice was a very, very good movie; well written, acted, and filmed. But I still would have snoozed through it...)