Cute modern day interpretation of Pride and Prejudice

Unleashing Mr. Darcy

By: The Hallmark Channel

Rating: 4 of 5

“Unleashing Mr. Darcy” is one of the latest remakes of Jane Austen’s iconic novel, “Pride and Prejudice”. I’m quite a fan of all of Ms. Austen’s works with “Pride and Prejudice” being one of my favorites. I’ve read many books and seen both movie and television mini-series interpretations and always look forward to seeing a new take on it.

In “Unleashing Mr. Darcy”, the role of Elizabeth Bennet is transformed into Elizabeth Scott (played by Cindy Busby) and Fitzwilliam Darcy becomes Donovan Darcy (played by Ryan Paevey). In the story, recently unemployed (unfairly fired) Elizabeth finds temporary employment as a dog handler and is also able to show her own King Charles Spaniel at a dog show where Darcy is judging the competition.

The two meet in less than stellar circumstances and are left with less than wonderful views of one another. In that sense, the movie follows the book very well. Darcy certainly appears full of pride and Elizabeth is quick to form opinions based on very little face.

My favorite character is that played by Frances Fisher. Her interpretation of Violet Darcy (as was Lady Catherine de Bourgh) in the Austen novel) was spot on. It’s not often that the “bad guy” in a movie turns out to be my favorite but Ms. Fisher is a consummate actress and brought believability to her role.

The movie has done away with a number of characters from the Austen novel, including Mr. Wickham and Elizabeth’s three younger sisters. It made sense in this treatment of the story but as these characters are so central to the book, it removed the movie more and more from the original story.

I enjoyed the movie, especially the cute dogs, and think that it was a good but not great re-invention of the English classic novel.
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