Mansfield Park

by Patricia Rozema

This wonderful Mansfield Park is Patricia Rozema's daring screenplay adaption of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. It's a witty look at romance and reality, Jane Austin-style.

Genres: Romance

147 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2000

Reviews

[Wynne Whitten Holmes · Rating 1 out of 5]

I know it's damned hard to adapt Mansfield Park, and that's because Jane Austen has written possibly one of the least likeable heroines to ever be famous. But the book deserves better than to be cut up and pasted into such a misrepresentation as this. The creators modelled their Fanny Price on Jane Austen herself, with her rapier wit, robust personality and prodigious talent for storytelling, and attempted to insert commentary on the times and the text which is entirely void of taste and judgment. What they produced was perhaps more appealing to modern dramatic sensibilities than the original, but the meaning, the moral, was confused and obscured. I really believe that it is possible to adapt this novel while being faithful to the source material, if not in every detail, certainly in the spirit. This was not it.

[Tammy McCallister · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really more of a movie review than the screenplay, but is possibly the only time I ever thought the movie was better than the book. The text of Mansfield Park is dull. No, D.U.L.L. In this adaptation they made the characters much more dynamic and played up the appealing parts of Fannie Price's personality. In the book she was a wet dishrag. Ugh.

Skip the book and see the movie.

I'll probably never give that advice about another book.

[Abby Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dear Patricia Rozema,




Do you ever feel bad about what you did to Mansfield Park?