Lorraine Feuerstein

The pacing is very slow, the plot is sketchy, and the characters are thinly drawn caricatures. It's all about style, but the style is bad and ill-suited to the story. There are long takes with nothing happening, and so the movie has no time left to tell a proper story. It's so boring that I had to do isometrics exercises to stay awake. The writing is poor (How does one screw up Austen?), and the music sounds lifted from "O, Brother, Where Art Thou?" The make up is bad. Some actors' appearances are weird, and some actors are simply miscast. Although Emma herself is reliably well-groomed, her hair and makeup is generally not flattering and that's distracting. Mr. Knightley, though, looks like he hasn't slept or bathed for days. He looks greasy and dirty; his hair is thoroughly disheveled; and his complexion is sallow. That's disturbing. The art direction is expensive--too expensive. It is, oddly, overdone. Instead of Highbury, we get Versailles. Each house seems like a palace. Emma is more unlikeable than usual, which is what happens with a lack of attention to character details. Bill Nighy is a good idea for Mr. Woodhouse, but he is given little to do. Mia Goth as Harriet is the best of the lot. The good: Emma's costumes are elaborate and interesting, and the scenery is amazing. When Mr. Knightley reveals his feelings for Emma, I probably shouldn't have been wondering what that gorgeous tree was, but there's the film in a nutshell. Emma is a good story, and the 2009 TV miniseries is still the one to beat. This is the worst Emma yet.