It is a real art if the director together with actors are able to father a agreeable show based on a trivial story. In the middle of the movie, we realize the half of the time is gone, but nothing still happened. The team was able to create the tension so appealing that we are absorbed, even without any grandiose plot and without any impassioned actions. The second half of the movie is filled by actions more moving, obviously very well known due to its literal master. There is a touch of misfortune, a typical British frightening countryside serves as a suitable background. All necessary components for a romantic novel are present. As an interpreting of J. Austen, the movie plays with many internal thoughts belonging to people within a romantic tradition of the end of 18th century. It seems these conversational games can last forever, never mind what's going on anywhere else. Evident, but quite pleasant case of escapism. The whole movie is a nice adventure, but with a touch of honesty, it is also a bit waste of time.

I did not watch this completely. I could not bear it. Everything was wrong.At first I thought: Interesting take on Henry Tilney, make him a little more ...glib, I think, fits.But then I found it false and implausible - bad acting did not help.Mrs Allen is too sweet. Missed the chance for authentic portrayal - she is a superficial, self-centered, nice enough simpleton, such a great foundation for caricature (Jane Austen was a genius at that!) Mr Allen too wordy in general.Isabella is FAR TOO NICE. She is supposed to be chatty, self-centered in a bad way, befriending Catherine with her own motives in mind.John Thorpe - completely wrong - oh my...another chance of caricature (and fun!!!) lost.Seems to be they just took the script from the 1986 version and juiced it up a bit (not that I watched that one through...life is short, and at least I want to decide what I waste it on - not this!!!) - a Roman bath scene??? Hello??? lol Catherine - oh Catherine. I love Catherine,naive and simple as she might be. Here she flirts, pouts and suffers from hormonal overflow - yucky! That they used a voice over with verbatim parts from the novel makes this even more ---- HORRID!!!:-) As has been stated here: If you don't do Jane Austen to the book, leave it! (Or take better script writers, actors and directors - I'm not adverse to interesting adaptations - like Clueless for Emma - but this is unnecessary drab)

This movie was very good, and I loved the music. I thought the actors all played their parts well, although the lady who played Eleanor seemed a bit too old for the part. If you haven't read Northanger Abbey, you'll probably like this movie just fine, but I watched this movie a day after finishing the book for the second time, so I noticed a few differences. (If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, go do so before reading the rest of this review!) Some of the differences aren't a huge deal, such as some events happening in a bit different setting than in the book. But others take away from the story some. For example, in this movie Henry just mentions a few things, like skeletons in closets, to freak out Catherine when they're on their way to the Abbey. When she's in her room, she opens an old trunk and finds a few scattered papers inside. But in the book, Henry gives Catherine a very detailed description of her looking into a tall cabinet and finding a secret passageway and finding mysterious papers, and when she's in her room, she finds just such a tall cabinet with a secret compartment that contains mysterious papers. Playing down that whole scene took out a lot of great drama from the movie, and I was a bit disappointed with that.Another thing I didn't care for was that the movie tells us things early on that the book doesn't tell until the end, like what John Thorpe was telling General Tilney at the theater, and introducing the guy that Eleanor later married--he wasn't even mentioned until the end of the book! The third difference that I really have a problem with is the way things happened at the Abbey. Some of it is fine--just a little condensed, but I don't like the fact that the movie has Henry leave without telling Catherine he forgives her for her terrible suspicions. In the book, he assured her that they were OK before he went away, and Catherine talked to both him and Eleanor (not just Eleanor like in the movie) about the letter from James and what he said about Captain Tilney. I think it's important to show that even after Henry learned of Catherine's ridiculously horrible suspicions about the General, they were almost immediately able to be on good terms and were able to discuss the issues surrounding Captain Tilney and Isabella. Also, the movie shows the General leaving before the group went to Woodston, whereas in the book, he was one of the party.So basically, this is a good and enjoyable movie, but I wish they wouldn't have changed some of those key points in the story. It wouldn't have taken much extra time (if any) to leave those things in, and it would've really added to the movie. I think the biggest problem is that they tried to condense the book into such a short movie. Movie adaptations of Jane Austen's books work the best if they're several hours long, like the Colin Firth version of Pride & Prejudice. Now, if you're still reading this and haven't read the book, go read it! It's a very interesting and entertaining book!

loved this movie! J Field and felicity Jones did an awesome job and have brought back romance to a movie..clean and tastefully done. henry's character was witty and you can't help being drawn to him and Catherine's character is complete innocence...unfortunately for me, i watched it too many times,,thank you for such a romantic, witty, and innocent movie..look forward to seeing more work by these actors, although in Canada we don't seem to get as much as i would like..good luck to these very talented actors. i would have loved to see more of the countryside of the movie, apparently it was filmed in ireland,would have loved to see more od the beautiful buildings such as woodston.