Dickens Lite
Written: Nov 18 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: A sweetly romantic, contemporary updating with fine performances
Cons: Purists may feel that Dickens has been reduced to a Trivial Pursuit
The Bottom Line: Perhaps part of the greatness of Charles Dickens' stories is that they can be reinterpreted in so many ways...This version emphasizes community and the extended family.
|
|
|
| SusanGranger's Full Review: Nicholas Nickleby |
In this surprisingly lighthearted version of Charles Dickens' classic story, writer/director Douglas McGrath ("Emma," "Bullets Over Broadway") focuses on the realities of Victorian life, particularly the extended family, which he defines as a group of beloved people, chosen one by one.
As the story begins, the family of 19 year-old Nicholas Nickleby (Charlie Hunnam) is left penniless when his father (Andrew Havill) dies, having speculated his money and lost.
When they travel from their home in Devonshire to London to appeal to their Uncle Ralph (Christopher Plummer), he maliciously sends Nicholas off to work as a teacher at the decrepit Dotheboys School while his mother (Stella Gonet) toils as a seamstress and his comely sister Kate (Romola Garai) is forced to 'entertain' Uncle Ralph's lecherous cronies.
Dotheboys (as in 'do-the-boys') turns out to be a wretched hovel where illegitimate or unwanted urchins are beaten and starved by nasty, sadistic, one-eyed Wackford Squeers (Jim Broadbent) and his cruel wife (Juliet Stevenson). But, there, Nicholas befriends Smike (Jamie Bell), a crippled orphan, and they run away together to seek their fortunes and - aided by Newman Noggs (Tom Courtenay) - wreak revenge on cold-blooded Uncle Ralph.
En route, Nicholas joins a colorful, campy theatrical troupe (Broadway's Nathan Lane, Alan Cummings, and Dame Edna Everage, a.k.a. Barry Humphries) and falls in love with a winsome - if destitute - wench named Madeline Bray (Ann Hathaway).
While this cheerfully episodic version is fast (130 minutes - as compared with the 8 1/2 hour Royal Shakespeare Company staged production) and funny, the character of Nicholas has been reduced to one-dimensional geniality, losing his cool only once when a cad corners and gropes his innocent sister Kate. On the other hand, Jim Broadbent and Christopher Plummer make deliciously disgusting villains, playing grim Dickensian decadence for laughs.
"I shall put his (Nicholas) ruin ahead of my business," Christopher Plummer-as-Uncle Ralph vows with a sneer. "People who wish to be thought of as good are always weak."
Purists may note that the Dickensian decade of the 1830s has been moved to the 1850s to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution, so that cinematographer Dick Pope and production designer Eve Stewart could utilize richly textured visuals to depict the vast difference between rural Devonshire and the urban squalor of London at that time. (There's a particularly grisly sequence on a London street, for example, where an enterprising undertaker has a coffin with four dead infants on display.)
According to the press notes, "Nicholas Nickleby" was filmed in London and Yorkshire this year with Gibson Mill in Hardcastle Crags standing in for the sinister Dotheboys School. Once a working textile mill, it's now set to be converted into a National Trust Visitors' Center.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Nicholas Nickleby" is a startlingly sweet 7 - and look for Douglas McGrath's introduction to the new Peguin edition of Charles Dickens' "Nicholas Nickleby."
For those who are curious, while there have been several screen versions of "Nicholas Nickleby," the only previous one I could find on video is the British 1947 drama, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, featuring Derek Bond, Cedric Hardwicke, Alfred Drayton, Bernard Miles, Sally Ann Howes, Mary Merrall, Sybil Thorndike and Cathleen Nesbitt.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
SusanGranger
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Susan Granger
Reviews written: 588
Trusted by: 460 members
About Me:
I'm a syndicated movie critic. For newest reviews, go to http://www.susangranger.com
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.