silverusagi

You know, there is just not a good version of Mansfield Park. The 1983 miniseries is godawful. The 1999 theatrical movie is just... not anything like the book. It's like someone took the idea of Mansfield Park and decided to fill it in with their own movie. Particularly all the slavery stuff, which you know Austen didn't deal with at all. And I'm not sure what's with all of Fanny's talking directly to the camera. Or what's with her writing. It's been a while since I read the book, but it wasn't like she wanted to be a writer. Oh, and who is this Fanny Price, anyway? She's way too much like Elizabeth Bennet here. And a minor nitpick: her clothing is all wrong. She's wearing weird shirts with almost modern cut looking collars, and a sort of dress that goes over it. Fanny, as the poor relation, would not have clothes as fine as the Bertram girls do, but they would be cut in the same style. Just not as trimmed, and made of cheaper material. Anyway. I do like Edmund, just because he's played by Johnny Lee Miller. But still, what is this movie.

Then there's the 2007 TV movie with Billie Piper, who is way too gorgeous to play Fanny, IMO, but I digress. Everything in this movie feels very compacted. It's sort of a quick fast forward marathon of Mansfield Park. We do get Klaus Joseph Morgan playing her brother in a quick scene, though Fanny never goes to Portsmouth in this version, so the ending feels very rushed. But the Crawfords are enjoyable enough. Really, there's not much in this version that isn't enjoyable, but it all goes by so fast, and I think it would be better if something like this had been a short miniseries instead of a movie. Anyway. I guess Mansfield Park isn't one of the more popular books, because it's one of the few of Austen's that hasn't gotten a miniseries remake in recent years.