Austenland

I have never read a Jane Austen novel.  That's not me bragging.  I just never have (does Pride & Prejudice & Zombies count?).  My experience with Jane Austen is limited to having watched more than my fair share of film and television adaptations of her works.  I bring all this up because the film Austenland is about a rabid Jane Austen fan who takes an immersive, period authentic Jane Austen vacation.  I was pretty sure that this was a movie that, at best, I would not be able to relate to.  Fortunately, no familiarity with Austen is required in order to "get" this movie.  And despite by intensely negative response to the trailer, I kinda liked this movie.

The plot is more specifically about a thirty-ish woman whose fanaticism for Jane Austen keeps her from being in a relationship.  Either her fandom frightens away men or men fail to live up to the dashing male characters from Austen's novels.  She finds out about a place called Austenland in the English countryside.  She spends her life-savings in order to go there and finally live her fantasy.  Once there, she must deal with the other patrons, the tyrannical headmistress, and romances both real and scripted.

Austenland is a really sweet.  It's not mean-spirited in any way.  Even the "villain" is allowed to be funny.  Keri Russell seems so well suited to this kind of movie that I kind it shocking that she's not been the lead of dozens of romantic comedies (but Waitress is so freakin' good that it's worth a dozen rom-coms).

The real standout performance comes from Jennifer Coolidge.  I swear that half her lines are probably ad-libbed, and the result is pretty funny.  Her gleefully dense character is what broke my determination to dislike this movie.  After Coolidge's wacky antics got me chuckling, it didn't take much for the easy charm of Keri Russell and Bret McKenzie to go to work on me.

Now, the film does struggle with setting up the love interest.  There are several male suitors but the movie is a little wishy-washy about which one we're supposed to root for.  This makes the ending feel a little rushed but not unearned.

Austenland also benefits from having several original songs from Emmy the Great on its soundtrack.  If you're unfamiliar with Emmy the Great, go buy her albums right now.  You'll thank me later.

I was really surprised to have enjoyed this movie.  It may be the biggest disparity between expectation and actual experience I had in 2013 (and that includes my heart-breaking disappointment in Man of Steel).  Ladies, check it out.  Fellas, watch it with your ladies (you might even like it).  Geez, 2013 was a pretty good year for romance.

6.5 out of 10