SnoopyStyle Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor) comes from a poor family. Her mother married for love. She was sent to live with her aunt's family the Bertrams in Mansfield Park at the age of 10. She's looked down upon by everybody except the son Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller). Sir Thomas travels to their Antigua plantation with the oldest son Tom. The rest of the family is joined in Mansfield by Henry (Alessandro Nivola) and his sister Mary Crawford (Embeth Davidtz). Edmund becomes infatuated with Mary. The Bertram sisters Maria and Julia both vie for Henry despite the fact that Maria is already engaged to the dull Rushworth.This movie takes slavery on as a central theme. Also Fanny Price is a thoroughly modern woman as well-read head-strong thinking woman. Her abolitionist views are ahead of her times. This adds something much more than the usual Jane Austen interior romanticism. I'm sure some Austen fans hate a lot of the changes but it works for me. It adds a higher moral idealism to the romance.

sawphil Well, if you like to see half-naked bosoms (now called by more common names) with great frequency, here's your chance. The actors are quite attractive and right for their roles, but they're not given any substantial roles by the vapid and totally distorted script. It was made for people with very short attention spans, which is understandable. The world and the web are so full of distractions that very few probably have the patience to read Austen's novel, her most complex and longest and, in many literary critics' views, her greatest. Far inferior to Colin Firth's and Barbara Ehle's Pride and Prejudice or Emma Thompson's (scriptwriter) version of Sense and Sensibility. Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong also produce fine characterizations in their performances in Emma.

Shaundra McTeer Remember that Jane Austen book you read where the protagonist wrote nonsensical stories and ran around her uncle's house shrieking like a whackjob? No? Maybe I can remind you of a bit more.The protagonist Fanny is an older woman who falls in love with her lipstick-wearing, teenage-boyish cousin Edmund. But Edmund falls in love with another cougar, Mary, who lives nearby. Mary the Cougar's brother Henry goes after Fanny. Fanny waffles about marrying Henry. Eventually she agrees. Then she changes her mind.Edmund's father, Sir Thomas, is a rapist who likes to torture his slaves for kicks. Sir Thomas also loves to letch on any woman within ten feet of him.Edmund also has a pretty sister named Maria - oh, wait, no. This Maria is a bit of a butterface. Julia is the pretty one, this time. Momma Bertram is addicted to drugs. Mrs. Norris appears in a scene or two, but isn't particularly evil, just kind of bitchy.Still not remembering? That's because this film is unrecognizable compared to the novel. The dialogue from the book is redistributed to the characters at random. Whole personalities are reworked. The entire point of the novel - staying true to your morals - is completely missed. Instead, this is a novel about angsty people who are trying to survive in a world controlled by The Patriarchy, in the form of the Evil Overlord Sir Thomas.Frankly, the whole film's ridiculous. It's what you get when a Jane Austen novel is done by a director like Patricia Rozema (who was, before this, best known for a small Canadian film about a lesbian threesome in an art gallery).The 2007 BBC version isn't great, but it's 100x better than this mess. Skip it.

cnycitylady Mansfield Park is one of my favorite Austen Novels (and one of her better written ones, I think) and this movie does it a kind of semi- justice. They change some of the points of the story by elaborating some things that they merely brushed over in the book. They don't emphasize certain other things that the characters feel, say or do but they do it without alteration of the essence of the character. (I will not point them out here for those of you who haven't read the book so as not to draw your eye to it when you watch the movie.) They also change the spot of where things happen, or how they happen but you still get the core of the characters across, so no harm done.Other than those small changes I think that this movie is very well done. No book-to-movie translation is exactly like the book. They must make artistic changes because you can't see exactly what the character is feeling or thinking. The casting was brilliantly done because the actors chosen don't overshadow the character they are meant to portray; although I think they gave the audience a more favourable persona in Edmund. In the movie he is protective and affectionate of Fanny (which he is in the Novel as well) but without the pass-over kind of affection that it was. In the novel he would sometimes seem to the reader unworthy of her affections just because he was so blasé towards her and her opinions that you would think him a bit of a snob. The movie cuts that out and makes him seem like the perfect man personified. Fanny was excellent, she was just as awkward and unsure yet lovely and well spoken as the Fanny in the book. The language of the script is considerably well written and the way that they speak pulls you into the storyline.Overall this is a good movie for period piece fans, but for the Austen fans who want an exact screen portrayal of their beloved book, they might be a tiny bit let down. This movie deserves a viewing no matter which group you fall under. 7/10