The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

For clarity: this isn't a movie. It was a mock-vlog reenacting Pride and Prejudice. It was set in California, and brilliantly updated. But I did waste a lot of time on it, and it deserves critical attention. It was an ambitious and well-executed project.

Things it did well: 1) captured the family trauma and separation anxiety that even the novel seems to make light of (I got all misty - several times). 2) made Lizzie a dynamic, maturing character rather than the static wit of Austen's novel (this contrast is clearly arguable). 3) updated the social conditions without sacrificing too many finer plot points (marriage became interchangable with business relationships). 4) brought familial affections to the foreground ahead of romance as part of the "updating." 4) ended drama/trauma with surprise and humor. 5) the female costumes. Brilliant.

Things it did badly: 1) Collins and Darcy were both clearly beefcakes in business suits. That works great for most casual audience members who like a nice beefcake with their Harlequin, and for Collins's already-established dislikability, but it's fatal for a romantic hero like Darcy, who in this portrayal, was clearly struggling to keep his pectorals behind his shirt-buttons. While his uneasy physicality made Lizzie's descriptor "robotic" quite believable, it made his position as CEO of Pemberly Digital totally ridiculous. Real businessmen (especially the obsessive, reclusive types) can be robotic, but they know their business, and they jargon fluidly, and they USE CONTRACTIONS. Anybody who thinks people don't use contractions is working with a stereotype outdated by nearly half a century. And briefly (and oddly successfully) resuscitated by Ryan O'Neal in What's Up Doc?. And sorry, but anybody who spends THAT much time in the gym is going to be more comfortable with himself.

The unfortunately clumsy use of jargon and academese is the fault of the writing, not the acting, but a superlative actor can pull off bad academese. See Samantha Carter or Daniel. . . in Stargate: SG1, or Darth Sidious in the Star Wars prequels (they all got bad writing, but only Ian McDiarmid managed to sound like not an idiot).

Anyway, Darcy is nearly impossible to write or act, after the brilliantly taciturn Colin Firth. Even (don't hate me) Matthew Macfadyen, though very much the Romantic (note the big "R") hero, and a beautiful specimen of the male of the species, ended his version by spouting drivel to satisfy the contemporary craving for verbal orgasm.

I think the key to a successful Darcy is "aloof." Less is more. The more you write, the more you are exposed to criticism, and this reticence is precisely the philosophy by which Austen's hero lives. "We neither of us speak unless we expect to amaze the whole room" - or some such epigram. 

Um, and what was up with his hair?