Trailer Trashin’: Keri Russell Loses Herself in Austenland

Pacific Rim finally opened this past weekend – if you’ve read my review, you know I absolutely loved it – and while I was disappointed that it opened soft here, it is doing well overseas, so there’s still hope that it will ultimately be successful. I’m certainly going to go see it again. But now it’s time for something completely different, because this week’s Trailer Trashin’ column takes a look at the upcoming romantic comedy Austenland.

Premise: A romantic comedy about thirty-something single Jane Hayes (Keri Russell), a seemingly normal woman with a secret: her obsession with Jane Austen’s character Mr. Darcy – as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice – is ruining her love life, because no real man can compare. But when she decides to spend her life savings on a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane’s fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined.

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My take: Many people would probably find this surprising, but I’m actually something of a Jane Austen fan. While I’ve only read a bit of her actual books, I have seen and enjoyed many of the films and television miniseries based on the books. And the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice is my favorite romantic story on either the big or small screen. However, I’ve never had any interest in the many sequels, prequels, and spinoffs to Austen’s work that modern authors have written; I generally hold them in the same dubious regard as the majority of fan fiction. But now, one of those books inspired by Austen is getting a movie adaptation of its own – Shannon Hale’s 2007 novel Austenland. The first trailer for the film version of Austenland has arrived, and while it doesn’t look like a particularly good movie, it should be fun for Austen devotees.

The cast is an interesting and eclectic bunch. Keri Russell, who has achieved great acclaim for her starring role on the TV series Felicity and her current role on the FX show The Americans, has the lead role of Jane Hayes. Russell is always an actress to pay attention to, and she looks like she’ll do some good work here. And considering all the dark material she has to play on The Americans, I’m sure she enjoyed the chance to do something a little lighter. Unfortunately, apart from Jane, all the information I’ve been able to find about the other characters only mentions the names of the roles they play at the resort, rather than the characters’ real names. J.J. Feild, who I know from his role as James Montgomery Falsworth in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), plays a man who goes by the name of Mr. Henry Nobley, who seems to develop a romantic interest in Jane. Jennifer Coolidge, best known from American Pie (1999), Legally Blonde (2001), and her work with Christopher Guest, plays a fellow visitor who accompanies Jane to the resort, where she goes by the name of Miss Elizabeth Charming. Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords fame plays a man named Martin, who seems to be another potential suitor for Jane. The great Jane Seymour, who needs no introduction, plays a woman who goes by the amusing name of Mrs. Wattlesbrook, who seems to be the host of Austenland, and her voice is the one we hear doing the narration in this trailer. And although I don’t think I spotted him here, James Callis, best known as Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, plays a man named Colonel Andrews, presumably another of the resort’s re-enactors. The cast is rounded out by Georgia King and Ricky Whittle.

I have to say, I love all the detail in the settings and costumes used in the Austenland resort, which really works with the idea of a theme park version of the Regency era. There’s also clearly some good material to mine humor from, and I did laugh at the moments of Jane hiding her cell phone in her cleavage and the re-enactors lounging around a swimming pool when they’re off the clock. But while the premise of the story is amusing, it does start to fall apart to you apply logic to it. If Jane was really obsessed with Mr. Darcy and Pride and Prejudice to the point where it was sabotaging her love life, I’d like to think her friends and family would try to stage some sort of intervention to help her. More to the point, we live in the Internet age, and there are all kinds of specialized dating websites for people to use. And contrary to popular belief, there are men out there who are fans of Austen and her books, and I’m sure that Jane could find one if she looked.

However the behind-the-camera talent associated with the film does give me pause. Director and co-writer Jerusha Hess previously co-wrote Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Nacho Libre (2006), and Gentlemen Broncos (2009), all of which were directed by her husband Jared Hess. Of those three movies, I’ve only seen Napoleon Dynamite, and, quite frankly, I hated it. Also, one of the producers on the film is none other than Stephenie Meyer, the author who unleashed the horror known as Twilight on an unsuspecting world. Meyer is a fan of Shannon Hale’s original novel, and I’m guessing her involvement mostly amounted to associating her name with the project to help it get made, rather than any position of real creative oversight. But I like to believe that any filmmaker or storyteller is capable of doing good work if they have the right material to work from, so I’m going to give the filmmakers here the benefit of the doubt.

In the end, I know Austenland isn’t a movie meant for me. This is a movie for the true Jane Austen devotees, the women – and men – who’ve grown up loving her books and her characters. In my opinion, the premise doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny and the behind-the-camera talent could be better; but it does have a good cast, beautiful scenery, and some great potential for humor. So if you are a lover of Jane Austen and her books, then you should mark your calendar to check out Austenland when it is released next month.