So, I generally try to stay away from controversial topics...

...but when somebody makes a request, what can I do? ;)

Ahem.  Well, see, it was suggested I write this week about Why I Don't Like P&P 2005.  Y'all know that's the case but I try not to be too detailed about that because I know I have readers who do like it and I have no wish to annoy anybody.

Also, a post is in the works for the P&P95Forever Club blog which will be an official P&P05 bashing.  Ha.  But I won't do that here... in fact, I'm not going to give you all the reasons I don't like this version because there are kind of a lot and I don't want to get carried away.  So I'll just go with the main reason-- I find it Inaccurate To Jane Austen's Novel.

Which I suppose requires further explanation.  In a nutshell, these are the particulars, not in any special order:

~The time period in general is inaccurate.  I could go into detail about what I mean, but I don't feel like bothering, so let's just say even the makers say they meant to set it in the late 1700s.  Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813-- they were about twenty years off, and you can definitely tell.  (Some may argue that this makes sense because Jane Austen started writing the novel in the 1790s, but I will argue back that that doesn't make much of a difference-- she started working on Pride and Prejudice in 1811.  She was writing a thing called First Impressions earlier, and this wasn't just editing, it was revision.  And updating.  Therefore, the book is supposed to take place when it came out.  The end. :D)
Besides for having the wrong time period, I think they give it a distinctly modern feel, and for me that Will Not Do.



~The script isn't even trying to be like the book.  They had to change everything.  And add things.  And take other things out.  I don't expect any adaptation to be word-for-word from the book all the time, but really, they could have done better.

~There are too many made-up scenes and additions to scenes that are not at all Janely.  Haha.  For instance, Mr. Darcy stalking Elizabeth in the rain and then proposing to her.  (I could write an entire post on what was wrong with the proposal scene-- well, both of them, actually-- but I don't feel like going there.  Just don't get me started.  Okay?)  Wandering around outside in your nightclothes... nooo.  No way.  That did not happen back then.  Lady Catherine randomly showing up late at night?  The list can go on, but I think you get my point.

Pretty much describes how I feel.

~A lot of the characters and actors just did not seem true to the book to me.  I'm trying to keep personal preference out of this, but it's hard.  Mr. Bennet was not humorous enough, Mrs. Bennet was too... normal... people ran around yelling things like "YOU CANNOT MAKE ME"... Mr. Bingley was a complete buffoon... Elizabeth sometimes acted like a slightly less stupid version of Lydia.  Many characters in some form showed lack of propriety that was not acceptable back then.  Georgiana was too young and child-like.  The list goes on... and on...

Side-ish note: Just look for pictures from this version.  There are hardly any in which Elizabeth is smiling or laughing or looking... Lizzy-ish.  Most of them are just like this:

~It was too short to get enough of the story and had to leave things out.  Including characters.  Elizabeth did not go to Hunsford to visit Charlotte by herself, she was going with Charlotte's father and sister who... were never even there in this movie, I think?  There is another Bingley sister... as well as her husband...

~They took the Bennets to be poor in a literal sense.  They were not poor.  They were still properly genteel, it's just that they weren't rich by the upper-middle-class standards, and Mr. Bennet did not have much money to leave his family.  But the girls would not wear those drab dresses all the time. Their place of abode would not look like a dilapidated farmhouse, and speaking of farms, though the Bennet family sort of had a farm it was run by the tenants and would have been a good distance from their actual house.  (Longbourn was actually a very small village owned by Mr. Bennet, people.)  There would not be chickens and pigs running around.

~I'm shutting up now. :D

Like I said, that's just a rather brief overview of the ways I consider the adaptation to be inaccurate to the book... other things such as how I just don't think it has the same feel as the book are more matters of opinion, I suppose.  And I must save some of my juice for that bashing. ;)

Saw this picture and thought it was just asking for Gothicizing. :P