Austenland
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Metascore
42

Mixed or average reviews - based on 32 Critics What's this?

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4.5

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Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 32
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 32
  3. Negative: 8 out of 32
  1. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Alan Scherstuhl
    Aug 13, 2013
    80
    The ending is a bit of an audience-pleasing cop-out, a retreat into formula after 80 minutes or so of upending it. But those upendings are memorable, the cast dishy fun, and Jerusha Hess and Shannon Hale's breeze of a script (based on Hale's novel) is smart about the allure of fictional romances.
  2. RogerEbert.com
    Reviewed by: Susan Wloszczyna
    Aug 16, 2013
    63
    All this sounds eminently promising. But it would need a wordsmith as witty and wise as Emma Thompson, who won an Oscar for adapting the big-screen version of 1995's "Sense and Sensibility," to pull it off and do Austen herself justice.
  3. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Silvija Ozols
    Aug 13, 2013
    60
    The Napoleon Dynamite cowriter-turned-director should have applied her editorial eye more consistently; Coolidge and King especially are allowed to wander into mugging far too often and for far too long.
  4. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Sara Stewart
    Aug 15, 2013
    50
    Twi-hards, Beliebers and Whovians have nothing on the cult of Jane Austen, whose beribboned ranks are ripe for satire. Unfortunately, this scattershot comedy only occasionally hits the mark.
  5. Total Film
    Reviewed by: Emma Johnston
    Sep 26, 2013
    40
    Too witless to be a decent comedy, too charmless to call itself a parody, this messy adap of Shannon Hale’s novel groans under the weight of a predictable plot and explosive overacting, although Bret McKenzie wrestling awful dialogue at least brings a touch of adorability as the resort’s elfin stable lad.
  6. Movie Nation
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    Sep 2, 2013
    38
    It’s never more than a theme park that isn’t worth the price of admission.
  7. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    Aug 31, 2013
    10
    So lazy is the characterization, so hamstrung the plot, and so chronically broad the overacting that the main interest lies in deciding which to block first, your eyes or your ears. [2 Sept. 2013, p.81]
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See all 32 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 1 out of 2
  1. TVJerry
    Sep 16, 2013
    7
    Keri Russell's character is obsessed with Jane Austen, so she spends her savings on an in an immersive experience in the author's world. While playing an Austen heroine, she meets two men (both handsome) and two other participants (Jennifer Coolidge & Georgia King, who are both over the top but still funny). There's a rollicking energy that keeps this film entertaining, despite the fact that most of the comedy isn't that clever. Entirely predictable but fun.… Expand
  2. GreatMartin
    Sep 6, 2013
    2
    “It is very seldom I have seen a bad performance by an actor in a film” was what I wrote in a previous review this past week and then today thy that ‘very seldom’ reared its head in “Austenland” where there are 2, I hope, purposely bad and 3 just plain bad performances. The latter are by actresses who will remain nameless as I don’t think they will put this film on their resume and not many will see them.

    Keri Russell gives a lively performance as Jane who has come to find her Darcy, here called Henry Nobley and played by JJ Feild in an assured performance, in “Austenland”, sort of a full Jane Austen resort. His rival, Martin, (Bret McKenzie) seems to have wandered in from D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” as the masculine caretaker. Talk about ‘masculine’, enter Navy very hard body stud Captain George East (Ricky Whittle) who, deservedly, takes off his shirt at any opportunity or just having the camera on him!

    The screenplay by the director Jerusha Hess and Shannon Hale, who also wrote the ‘chick-lit’ bestseller of the same name, is all over the place being neither a homage to Jane Austen, a romance-comedy or even sticking to the fantasyland idea intruding with a modern soundtrack.

    The bottom line is that if you have never read Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, or one of her other novels, you would be better off reading them or if you have read any of her books reread them and stay away from this movie. It is not a bad movie, even though it has some embarrassing performances, but it does not deliver on the major premise.    … Expand

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