AUSTENLAND the film (Aug 2013)

AUSTENLAND is a fluffy, romantic comedy romp for every age, that turns PRIDE AND PREJUDICE into a hilarious cross between CLUELESS and TOM JONES. The laugh-out-loud burlesque begins, and even more funny different parts got different parts of the audience laughing,  when Jennifer Coolidge first appears with pink suitcases.  You’ll instantly recognize her if not her name). “She ad-libbed a lot,” according to screenwriter-director, Jerusha Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), who co-wrote the film with the author of the AUSTENLAND novel, Shannon Hale (Twilight).  

Yet the absolutely and whimsical and detailed ingenious film design, from delicate, earnest and intelligent lead Keri Russell to  the brilliantly solid and very amusing young British cast (JJ Feild, Bret McKenzie, Georgia King and also Jane Seymour) matched her. These names to remember, young and beautiful and commanding actors who make a film worth watching.  Each did their part to make the whole film add up to much more than the sum of its parts.  A summer must-see.

Even though critics (and I agree) found the film to be uneven, filled with plot holes and superficial, every second of it was a joy.  And (critics agree) this viewer knew who our heroine should be together with at the end of the story, but the writing cleverly kept everyone guessing.  

The story is simple. Our heroine, Jane Hayes, has been so obsessed with all things Jane Austen since she was a girl that she is lost in novel-land.  It seems natural, in all ways except for the exorbitant fees, to spend her life savings on a trip to AUSTENLAND in Britain, a theme park where “guests” stay for a week and live out their Austen fantasies in full costume and decor of the regency period with male actors, as dreams become reality.  That Jane is the only guest not on the platinum package plan only adds to her own plot and plight she must master.