studioAT What with a similar film being made about Beatrix Potter not too long after/ before this film it seems a trend it emerging about the real life of beloved authors.With Anne Hathaway, Dame Maggie Smith and Julie Walters all involved you'd hope for a better film than what we actually get.Slow, dull and all in all not that entertaining, this film manages to provide us with information but seems to be lacking the fun in doing so.If you want to learn more about Austen I suggest you visit Bath instead. Or better still just read the novels. You can then draw your own conclusions about how Jane became Jane Austen.

zhongzl-kelley2014 I'm glad I didn't watch the movie with some sarcastic companion mumbling about the how it's distanced from the history, or how the lines and costumes in there are anachronistic, because not all of the audience are professionals, inspecting the movie with their pedantic X-rays. There are kids assigned to watch the movie because the teachers want them to be interested in the classic author, there are couples borrowing the DVD because they want to watch something romantic at their date. Honestly, most of the audience open their laptops, expecting a good story. If some ossified dusted scholars want some historical truth, they go to the BBC. So I'm perfectly satisfied with this brilliant piece of work, it's got twists in the plot, fervent love between two sexy intellectuals that make you sign with pleasure, and the demonstration of Jane Austin's admirable character dominated by ration, moral and firm faith in love. It's definitely the movie to go if you are teaching your child what kind of lady you want her to be, instead of Hanna Montana or Mean Girls.I've read the original version of P&P, it was a sheer torture for a 15-years-old teenager, but when I precede and encounter Mr.Darcy between Jane's gentle touch of pen, I became obsessed with it. I flung two subjects in the semester exam because I was at the part when Elizabeth was confessing her poignant misunderstandings towards poor Mr. Darcy, my heart writhed in pain because Mr.Darcy was what sensible girls always dream of :handsome, intellectually equal with Elizabeth and has a HUGE CASTLE. But it makes the departure of Tom devastating to watch, because the audience and sense the wistful romance in P&P when Jane was torn apart from her man in so disappointing a manner. I can perfectly understand the authors that fulfill the holes in their lives with happy endings, because that's where fancy originated from. In this light, the movie makes perfect sense, because every quality Elizabeth Bennet exhibited, Jane perfectly embodied them, and every thing Jane yearned for, Elizabeth had them eventually. I will not judge the acting, because it brings out the softest and most beautiful part of my nature. I'll not judge the camera angles, because it's flexible and smooth like the eyes of god. I can't judge the script either, because it doesn't abuse a syllable. If Anne Hathaway is more linear to Jane's appearance, this movie totally deserves a ten.

ianlouisiana As a Brit I feel a certain guilt at not being very conversant with Mss Austen's work in contrast to so many Americans who seem to know how often she changed her socks. When I was at school in the 1950s she had not yet come back intofashion and Virginia Woolf was the token woman in Eng Lit. So how much of "Becoming Jane" is fact and how much fiction I can't vouch for. Miss A.Hathaway plays her as a clever young woman,but not clever enough to disguise her intellectual superiority to all the men in her circle,which would have left her little option but to have sought work as a Governess had she not been able to translate her intelligence and wit into that relatively recent phenomenon the novel. By using much of Miss Austen's own words,the film risks being labelled - rather like "Hamlet" - as OK but too full of quotations. However that is not the problem I have with it. "Becoming Jane" is,unlike it's subject,rather tedious. Mostly played on one note,with supporting parts played firmly acted in BBC bodice - ripping period style and only the wonderful Miss Anna Maxwell Martin showing any individuality. Miss Hathaway does fine but I suspect Jane Austen would have sounded rather less Oxbridge and more Ambridge. As we all know Miss Austen never married the impact of her being dumped by Mr Lefroy is slightly less than startling. The scenery's nice,the lighting and sets are good...but the whole thing seems a bit.. I don't know...pointless?

clare-kendall To make a film about the life of Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated (if not the most celebrated) female authors of all time which manages to patronise women is quite some achievement and Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams should be justly proud. This seemingly impossible feat is brought off by pretty much ignoring her many literary masterpieces and focusing instead, with barefaced inaccuracy, on a failed early romantic liaison. I'm not going to criticise the actors as they all too often get the blame for badly drawn characters but the notion that Anne Hathaway's Jane could have written a book like Pride and Prejudice is, frankly, hilarious. I can only assume that the makers of this film have mistaken all that swooning over Colin Firth's wet shirt scene and Greg Wise's heroics on horseback as evidence that fans of Jane Austen are nothing more than lovers of ditsy romances.Yes, Austen's stories are, essentially love stories but take the romance out and it's still great literature. It is her timeless wit, intellect and brutal exposure of human nature that has made Austen one of the most widely read and appreciated authors in history. There is a very great, and not at all delicious, irony that the world Jane Austen describes is one in which a woman is judged merely on her ability to make a good match and that, despite all her critical acclaim as a writer, this is what film makers centuries later should choose to reduce her own life to. I watched this film, against my better judgement, on a flight between Quito and Miami. The immigration queues couldn't come quick enough.