Miss Jane Austen’s “Emma” A Quickie Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Whatever her personal situation concerning her love life or lack of love life Jane Austen was the queen of the romantic novel, maybe the gothic romantic novel as well. Everybody else today on the pot-boiler, harlequin romance best-seller list owns a debt of gratitude to Jane for seriously, great literature seriously bringing the genre to the light of day. Of course, Hollywood and other locales has had a field day making cinematic hay out of her novels. That is the case here as well with this made-for-television rendition of his classic busy-body tale, Emma.

Needless to say, the whole plot revolves around Miss (Ms. today but let’s not be anachronistic so Miss) Emma Wodehouse, she of the landed estate and of extreme class, social and etiquette consciousness-for others in need of serious romance leading well leading to the altar of course. Naturally our Emma is personally impervious to love’s call-it does not suit her character as she gladly tells one and all. So she goes through her passes first getting her governess to the altar (to the distress of her crotchety father) and then her friend (whom she almost drops the ball on with her distressingly high sense of class-gentleman farmers acceptable but real in the dirt farmers go to the back of the line.  To be sure she had own, unacceptable, suitors and had taken an interest in one Mister Churchill who in the end turned the tables on Emma having all along been secretly engaged to a gal who she though beneath her. 

Don’t worry despite her scatter-brained efforts and her own lack of any serious accomplishments (or desire for such deeds) she will one day have an epiphany and realize that he was head over heels in love with a gentleman farmer who she had known forever. Thanks Jane-and all you romance novelists who have feasted off her ideas should be doing so as well. Not Jane’s best for story line but okay to watch if not to read.