I have just had the pleasure of reacquainting myself with the novel Mansfield Park, which I haven't read for at least... oh, a year... I'm a huge Jane Austen fan. But I'd never seen this film, and thought it would be a nice way to pass a wet Sunday afternoon. Wtf, as Jane Austen might have said had she seen it. Why take a book, characters, settings, and then present something so totally unrelated? Everything was terribly wrong from the first minute. Instead of the main character Fanny Price being almost pathologically shy, timid and terrified of everything and everyone, she's presented as a sort of Jo March (Little Women), striding everywhere spouting feminist tracts. When she arrives at Mansfield Park, instead of finding a beautiful, wealthy, genteel family to welcome her, she's met in a crumbling, Gothic ruin which appears to have no furniture. Jane Eyre? I'm at a loss. It was awful, just awful. Why not stick some zombies in Jane Austen as well... oh, someone did. Shame. If you want to see a superb recreation of a Jane Austen on screen, watch Emma with Romola Garai. Give this "Mansfield Park" abomination a miss.

Well, if you like to see half-naked bosoms (now called by more common names) with great frequency, here's your chance. The actors are quite attractive and right for their roles, but they're not given any substantial roles by the vapid and totally distorted script. It was made for people with very short attention spans, which is understandable. The world and the web are so full of distractions that very few probably have the patience to read Austen's novel, her most complex and longest and, in many literary critics' views, her greatest. Far inferior to Colin Firth's and Barbara Ehle's Pride and Prejudice or Emma Thompson's (scriptwriter) version of Sense and Sensibility. Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong also produce fine characterizations in their performances in Emma.

Mansfield Park (1999)A remarkably clear-headed film that make Jane Austen real and alive. The heroine here is perhaps even a bit like Austen—though the actress is prettier, by all accounts—and it includes letters read by the character that are seemingly Austen's words. But what the cast and director Patricia Rozema pull off here is fabulous. There is no one reason this movie works so well, except of course the really scintillating, funny writing of Austen herself. The lead character is Fanny Price, played with true joy, angst, and subtle wit by Frances O'Connor. The two men who court her on and off are strong enough as men to be convincing, but they are perfectly still young men, barely more than boys in years, and they have those youthful flaws. Which is part of the fodder for Austen's wit.And social observation. If you don't quite catch the way she plays social classes against each other you miss part of the substance. It isn't just that the poor niece ends up at the rich uncle's house, but that this same niece has the perception to see through their facades. And to keep mum until just the right moment.This isn't a liberation film where the woman charges to victory in a big speech or by a power play. Instead—and this is one reason Austen is still readable today—the woman simply comments on the issues in a way that makes clear her more advanced views, and the obstacles slowly fall away through outside circumstances (rather than her own doing). The passivity of Fanny Price might bother some people, but that's exactly her role, as a character, in this pageant.One last point—slavery. This is the one novel of Austen's that gets her in trouble for her languid views on the uncle's use of slaves in the West Indies. The movie seems to twist this into a more modern condemnation, which helps us stay sympathetic to the whole shebang. There is even an added scene of sketches (done in a way rather like Goya's socially critical drawings of the same time, with some Kara Walker thrown in) which make clear the crisis at hand.If you want to dip into Austen through a movie, choose between this and the 2005 "Pride and Prejudice" and you won't be disappointed. Of course, if you want to read the book—that's even better. More modern and fresh than it "should" be for 200 years ago.

Anyone who has ever read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen should not bother to watch this movie. Other than the characters having the same name and the house having the same name, there is no part of the book here. It is not a bad movie, it just is not Mansfield Park. Trying to squash the book into 2 hours and 21st century it makes it vulgar and crude. So many things are left out for want of time and you never really understand why Fanny dislikes Henry so. She never accepts Henry, her father doesn't leer at her like meat, Sir Thomas is not cruel and heartless. It is a shame that such a wonderful novel had to be turned into this drivel instead of trying to keep true to the story. Fanny isn't the type of woman who talks back, even as a child. It makes me sad that I gave up two hours to watch this.