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Wonderful character development!

So much average

Great Film overall

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

An eccentric and well-born English family in the 1930's tries to cope with genteel poverty, while the two stunning teenage daughters of the family experiment with passion and romance. Main thing you need to know: Romola Garai is not only lovely, she's an acting genius. Her fresh, innocent blond beauty rivets your attention, and she hits the right note in every scene -- curious, defiant, tender, lonely, confused, caring. She not only hits the right note, she often hits two or three right notes at once. Watch her animated facial expressions and you'll see she always gives you more than one emotionThe problem with this movie is that it tries to be too many things. One minute it's a sexy teen romance, like DIRTY DANCING (which also starred Romola Garai.) Then it's cerebral satire of long-forgotten intellectual types, like COLD COMFORT FARM. Then it's some kind of Masterpiece Theater type thing about newly rich Americans in England, and what fools they are for European elegance. Derivative themes and a thin plot with too many familiar stereotypes. There are too many supporting characters, and aside from the luminous Romola Garai none of them are especially sympathetic. Marc Blucas was pretty good in JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB. Here he shows more muscle-power than talent. Henry Thomas is getting too old to be playing boyish and innocent. Bill Nighy as the eccentric dad has some authentic moments, but was a better patriarch in UNDERWORLD. ("Lycans, daughter. The lycans took my talent. Lucan and his kind . . spoiled my taste for f-f-f-fiction!")There is one extremely interesting sub-plot about a local village lad the heroine thinks of as a friend, who worships her and is rejected. In an unexpected twist, a wealthy older woman seduces him and takes him to London, where he becomes a successful actor/model. The film handles this in a sensitive way, neither pitying the young man nor condemning him for giving in to his wealthy female protector. Unfortunately, this most interesting sub plot is only given a few minutes of screen time. Summing up, then, this movie is something you must see only if you are a fan of the phenomenally talented Romola Garai. Other than that, it's really a hit or miss movie, and some parts are very thin.

I was quite pleased for much of the movie. Some of the acting (especially the Cotton brothers) was weak, but most of the castle family was good. Things were going very well and then the screenwriter made that most fatal error of judgement: presuming they can write it better than the author. I think good novel adaptation requires great self-discipline (even self-abnegation) and self-expression is very hard to suppress. This screenwriter should have been suppressed by a thick layer of quick-drying cement. Even the book brushes the limits of what's bearable near the end, but it maintains its charm and is a fine novel. The screenplay overwrites much of the humour and charm with heavy-handed dramatic scenes, unleashing an orgy of tearful, confessional encounters. Worst of all, it betrays the novel deeply by buying into the very psycho-babble that the author delightfully mocks. Terribly disappointing after a decent start. I give it a tolerable rating because, viewed as a romantic comedy independent of the book, it compares fairly well with others in the genre. It still has some good scenes and Cassandra is, for the most part, very well played. The setting is also quite good and much as I had imagined it.

For those who enjoyed the book first, this film seems strangely wrong. The filmmakers are too greatly influenced by a combination of the Merchant-Ivory films, all those wonderful Masterpiece Theatre/BBC historical British dramas and a sort-of light, airy type of film-making that's completely out-of-place for this story.This family is living on very hard times and I don't think that's shown properly. In the book, Topaz is a much stranger character (in the book, she reminds me of a blonde version of perhaps, Morticia Addams(!) and Mortmain should not just be moody. In the book, he's much more odd...and interesting.I guess they got Rose and Cassandra right, but there's none of the poverty and hopelessness that's so clearly drawn in the book.Perhaps this one of those books that simply couldn't be properly adapted nearly 40 years after it was written.

I read the book in my English class and after we had read and assessed the book we were told that we were in for a treat because we had done such great work. We were allowed to watch the film of I capture the castle in class, It was nothing like the book. they took important bits out and added useless bits in in their places, we lost the motherly characters for rose and Cassandra when Mrs blossom was just a dummy we saw in the corner of the screen and ms Marcy was just a school teacher with little say in their lives when both characters had a great deal of say in the book for as i said they add a kind of motherly atmosphere for the girls for they have no mother and it shows just how much they miss their mother but in the film without them they also loose the atmosphere for rose and Cassandra and their lose and suffering without their biological mother. it is a good film but has little to nothing to the book, if you haven't read the book and are thinking of watching the film then i say that you wont get the real story that Dodie smith wrote.