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Such a frustrating disappointment

Best movie of this year hands down!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Mansfield Park (1999) was written and directed by Patricia Rozema. It's based on Jane Austen's novel. Frances O'Connor stars as Fanny Price, the protagonist of the novel. Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are considered Jane Austen's two best works. Mansfield Park is down a rung on the ladder along with Persuasion and Emma. However, Jane Austen may well be the world's greatest English-language novelist, so even her less dazzling novels are read, and re-read, to this day.The film version rises and falls on the character of Fanny Price, the poor relation who is sent to rich relatives who live at Mansfield Park. The plot revolves around Fanny, and Frances O'Connor brings her alive. (At age 32, O'Connor was chronologically too old for the part, but she has a very vital, youthful quality, and she looks perfect in the role.) Not only does O'Connor do great work, but the supporting cast is excellent, and the production values are high.However, a controversy arises because director Rozema has chosen to subtly shift the characters and the sense of the novel to add incidents from Austen's own life, and to include a moral discussion about slavery. (The slave trade in England was outlawed in 1808, but slavery itself was not outlawed until 1833.)As cited in Wikipedia, "The result is a film that retains the core character evolution and series of events of Jane Austen's novel, but in other ways, some critics claim, stresses its themes and ideas differently. The plot changes the moral message of Austen's novel, and makes the story a critique of slavery rather than a conservative critique of the "modern." In the novel Fanny's passivity and moral stance are seen as virtues but these aspects of her character are missing from the film." I refer you to the complete article in Wikipedia, but this paragraph is the core of it.The question for me becomes, "Can scriptwriter Rozema improve on Jane Austen? Should director Rozema allow her to do this?" That's not an easy question, and I don't have an easy answer.This film was made for the large screen. We saw it on the small screen, and it worked pretty well. Whether it is or isn't what Jane Austen had in mine, it's a very good movie, and worth seeking out.

It's like Sense and Sensibility, if Sense and Sensibility was less lighthearted and perhaps more poorly constructed. Don't get me wrong, I liked this movie, I just had a couple of problems with it. There are several points in the film where the main character, Fanny Price, is reading letters that she wrote to her sister and they are only there to explain exactly what is happening to the audience and it rubbed me the wrong way. Thankfully it didn't happen too much though. I also didn't like the end of the film. It wrapped up way too quickly. I was honestly shocked when I realized the movie was ending. It felt like they tried to include too much content into too short of a run time, and it was really noticeable to me. I would have definitely preferred a longer movie, as long as they used that time to develop what was happening more. This movie isn't without pros though. The acting and writing are both great and the cinematography was pretty decent as well. I imagine fans of Jane Austen as well as average film goers will enjoy it. 6.6/10

Jane Austen's Fanny Price is a challenging character to understand: torn away from her family and socioeconomic sphere at 10, she loses all sense of self-worth, and shrinks into a profound insecurity where all she has to cling to are her middle-class moral values. The novel is the story of how those eventually prove stronger than the values of the rich family she's been pushed into. It would take a talented and sensitive filmmaker to bring her character to the screen.So these filmmakers didn't bother. Instead, they sent an Elizabeth Bennet clone to Mansfield: witty, vivacious, playful, and easy for the audience to like. The thing is, this isn't Pride and Prejudice, and the story and challenges no longer make any sense. I gave up after 20 minutes.I'll keep waiting for a good Mansfield Park movie. 3/10 for at least picking up (however clumsily and inaccurately) on Austen's subtle references to the slave trade.

Anyone who has ever read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen should not bother to watch this movie. Other than the characters having the same name and the house having the same name, there is no part of the book here. It is not a bad movie, it just is not Mansfield Park. Trying to squash the book into 2 hours and 21st century it makes it vulgar and crude. So many things are left out for want of time and you never really understand why Fanny dislikes Henry so. She never accepts Henry, her father doesn't leer at her like meat, Sir Thomas is not cruel and heartless. It is a shame that such a wonderful novel had to be turned into this drivel instead of trying to keep true to the story. Fanny isn't the type of woman who talks back, even as a child. It makes me sad that I gave up two hours to watch this.