Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

I haven't read Jane Austen's classic novel Pride and Prejudice and I've never had the urge to. I read Sense and Sensibility and it wasn't my cup of tea. So, I turned this on with the hope that having a more contemporary element would make a story that clearly wasn't written for me, easier to sit through. I'm happy to report that it did and a large part of that was the humour that they incorporated into the narrative. Maybe other people saw it differently, but it just made me smile to watch people in this elaborate gowns and debonair dress slicing and dicing the undead. They establish the mythology (which was tightly written enough to satisfy me) and while they follow the beats of the original story, the zombie fighting is squeezed in and it works better than I thought it would have. It wasn't perfect, but I thought it was a pleasant surprise.So, while this movie departs from the classic story, my problems with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies don't have anything to do with those changes. The most noticeable flaw with this project is the sub-par effects and makeup. The budget on this is relatively low at $28 million (which was good considering how few people saw this in theatres) and unfortunately it shows. The costuming is good but with so many competing zombie TV shows (The Walking Dead) and movies (Zombieland) doing zombies so much better, it makes P&P&Z look even worse by comparison. I was also disappointed that the ending fizzled out. This could be blamed on the source material, but I don't see how. There's a considerable buildup with the rivalry between Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley) and George Wickham (Jack Huston) and the movie seems to be preparing you for a bad@$$ zombie fight. But there's almost nothing when the resolution hits and while I can appreciate a credit stinger that seems to set things up for a sequel, I wanted more.Through the positives and the negatives, the big thing that this movie brought to my attention was how talented Lily James is. I had seen her in supporting parts in Baby Driver, Darkest Hour and the Exception (Downtown Abbey isn't my thing) but she's the lead heroine here as Elizabeth Bennet and she knocks it out of the park. She anchors this movie capably and I don't know if this movie would have worked without her. She's turning into a performer that I would tune into a show or movie I didn't know about just because of her involvement. I largely liked the rest of the cast, but I also want to credit Matt Smith as the Bennet's wimpy cousin Parson Collins. I'm not familiar with him as an actor but he had me laughing in almost every scene he appeared in. This is a movie full of strong characters and Parson is conversely so pathetic that it becomes easy to mine laughs out of him being such a tool. I also enjoyed Bella Heathcote, Charles Dance, Jack Huston and Lena Headey in their supporting parts.I can understand die hard fans of Pride and Prejudice turning their nose up to this. But I'm not in that camp and this movie made the Pride and Prejudice story palatable for me. I liked the tongue-in-cheek humour, how they decided to work in the zombie elements in and the movie boasts a dynamic lead performance from Lily James. Is it a landmark in screenwriting? Absolutely not but I did enjoy this movie from beginning to end. My true rating for this would be a 7.5/10 but I'll round up to 8/10. I would recommend this to people looking for an interesting mashup of genres, but I would also warn you ahead of time, if you're a fan of the classic novel, this film probably will seem like blasphemy.

Well constructed, acted and filmed. Farcical, funny, very well referenced and not in any way to be taken seriously! I suspect that it doesn't translate well, which may explain some of the bad reviews but it's up there in the best tradition of British farce. An excellent film.

I'm not a big fan of zombie movies, to be honest, but it's OK to see one once in a while. I'm against the idea of messing with classic novels this way. It's OK to make parodies sometimes, but this is neither parody nor a zombie movie. I enjoyed the romantic part of this story but sneered at the zombie part. Not quite sure what the intention of the people behind this movie was or what they were trying to say. If a movie doesn't deliver a message, it has to be entertaining. Other than that it's questionable. This movie is not OK with the zombie part. If we take out the zombie scenes, the movie wouldn't be ruined. Anyway, you will be entertained by the smooth dialogue between the actors and the romance in the story.

Well I had planned to see this at the cinema....I'm glad I didn't.Some of the lines are just delivered rather lacklustre and it tends to drone on and in some scenes the players look very uncomfortable with each other.I do not know if he meant to play it this way but I felt the need to want to feed Matt Smith to the zombies and he greatly ruined any scene he was in.There were a couple of chuckles.I'd say watch on Netflix or DVD if you can but only free or rental.Action scenes are well done though and the visual effects and makeup are great.Sadly not enough to save it from slightly bombing.