Kris wrote:
BBC’s 1971-version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Classic, timeless. I watched it, can you?

“Jane Austen’s Persuasion” is a 1971 British mini-series set in pre-Victorian England. It is 225 minutes long (that’s 3 hours and 45 minutes if you don’t feel like doing the math). Now, I had been dreading watching this particular dare specifically because of its length. I put the thing in my DVD player, and about 3 minutes into it, my phone (which hadn’t rung in over 2 days) starts lighting up. I ended up stopping the movie at least 4 times during the first 20 minutes. Oh, brothers! Things where looking rather grim for your humble narrator! Fortunately, the distractions subsided after the first half hour, and I was left to throw myself fully into director Howard Baker’s creation.

As you can imagine, you can fit a lot of stuff into 3 hours and 45 minutes. That’s enough time for two Pumkinheads or Revenge of the Nerds, plus a whole episode of 21 Jump Street. What I’m saying is, 225 minutes is a pretty decent chunk of time, and you can put a lot in a film that’s that long. The plot of this mammoth would be much too lengthy and intricate to explain in words, so, for the benefit of my many readers who have stuff to do today, may I present a visual aid of sorts. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce a work of my own design:

The Jane Austen’s Persuasion Graphic Novel (abridged version)

…and then, after 225 minutes, the paint was completely dry.

I don’t understand how women can like such lame stuff. “Persuasion” surprised me in only one respect: it took the chick-flick genre one step further away from watch-able, which I never thought was possible. Instead of something like “The Lake House”, which wasted my time by TALKING about love, “Persuasion” spends 4 hours HINTING about love. How is that even possible?

Just to give you a few examples of what this piece of trash called plot points:

“Anne, do you know that song? Play it for us, please”
“Look at the view”
“I do think we should get some of those Chinese roses, don’t you?”
“You never gave anyone the impression that you liked long walks”
“I remember, yes, you never did care to play cards”

Notice that these are all just bits of dialogue–that’s because the movie contains NOTHING ELSE! Okay, at one point in the middle, one of the main girls falls and hits her head (which to anyone with a shred of consciousness left only meant one less yap to listen to). Other than that, the entire movie is just people talking, in various settings, about who’s coming to the party, who’s in who’s good graces, or who’s relatives are coming to Bath. BORING! There are only 2 things that I can think of that could’ve saved this movie: a cyborg that turns into a werewolf or Rodney Dangerfield’s character in “Caddyshack”. That’s it.

A Note on Directing: So, one very odd thing about this movie was that all of the exteriors were shot on what looked like your average 70s era film stock, and all the interiors were shot with this “Dark Shadows”-ish video tape. The effect is unappealing. I’d like to think that it was an artistic vision gone wrong, just so I could berate this whale of a turd some more, but my best guess is that it had something to do with budget.

If they didn’t have enough money to do the whole thing on film, it would have been much better to shoot the whole thing on video and pour some money into special effects when the mouthy woman falls and hits her head. It wouldn’t have saved the movie (like I said, there are only 2 things that could’ve done that), but it would have been awesome to really see that girl get “Dawn of the Dead” messed up when she hit the pavement. There could’ve been brains falling out and stuffy Englishmen trying to pick up the brains with their handkerchiefs and subsequently slipping in the brains and maybe some brains could fly into one of the girl’s eyeballs and she would be so distraught that she would faint right into the brains on the ground and break a nail and cry. Just a suggestion.

Anyway, this movie stunk, and did it for a long time. The girl who dared me to watch it is actually a friend of mine, but her boyfriend (also a good friend) called me up pleading for his woman’s safety. Kris, thank your boyfriend–I’m allowing you to keep both of your knees.

Times I had to avert my eyes: 0
Breaks necessary to complete viewing: 10+
Overall rating from 1 to 10: 2 (I’m not giving it a 1 only because there was a character in the film with a great beard. In a “1″, there would be no such character)

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