It is a truth universally acknowledged that Emily Blunt possesses one fine piece of posterior. Less universally acknowledged, though nonetheless true: Maggie Grace is smokin’, Maria Bello is aging splendidly and likes it on the stairs, and Amy Brenneman will get you killed if you feel the heat coming around the corner. Not true at all: I cannot wait to see The Jane Austen Book Club.
That was true when the project was announced last year, and it’s especially true now that the film’s trailer has made its online debut. I don’t care if Patricia T. O’Connor raved in the august pages of the Sunday New York Times book review supplement that Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, on which the movie is based, is "that rare book that reminds us what reading is all about." For starters, O’Connor’s a skirt, so her taste is highly suspect, especially when Ms. Austen is involved; slap Austen’s name on the cover of a Tom Clancy’s Op Center thriller, and I guarantee you a whole mess of chicks’ll be swooning over the tech-laden prose as if it were put down by the Patron Saint of Dowdy Single Women her damn self. For another, even if Fowler’s tome is surprisingly decent, it’s now spawned a literary genre of women sitting around mis-interpreting great books as a means of explaining away their myriad emotional/physical inadequacies, and this I shall not abide.
Had the film version of The Jane Austen Book Club been entrusted to, say, Nicole Holofcener, I might’ve given it a pass and, god forbid, actually watched the fucking thing because the presence of genuine wit and nuanced character development would’ve likely cut the feel-good formula horseshit. Unfortunately, this is a Robin Swicord movie, which means it’s got a 100% chance of being worse than a knee to the humid home of man (he says, conveniently forgetting how much he enjoyed her 1994 adaptation of Little Women). Even the presence of the delectable Ms. Blunt (playing uptight again) won’t be enough to spice up this… insipid estrogen stew? I’m running out of vitriol. Just watch the trailer and try not to cut your dick off.