Less Pride and Prejudice! More Zombies!

I was looking forward to this flick, since the various adaptations of Pride and Prejudice really bug me in that they mostly stick to the 1813 spirit, where saying no to a marriage proposal was the most dramatic and rebellious thing that could happen in the life of a woman. While great for its own time, P&P has nothing to say to the modern viewer, unless this strength of the female characters that Jane Austen wanted to convey gains a new meaning, in a way that can still be viewed as strong/independent nowadays. So I was hoping that the Zombie twist, along with the tongue-in-cheek comedic feel could achieve this.

And the movie did achieve some things: the female characters are also warriors, there is an external motivator to the plot, other than the dull issue of who is going to marry whom, there is action and there is even the potential of a better character development and motivation for the two central characters (e.g. there's no much to justify the moodiness of Mr Darcy in the original, other than his minor family troubles, whereas now he is a seasoned zombie hunter who has seen a lot and has had to kill his own zombified father).

The problem is that the film (sticking to the book, I presume, which is a parodic exercise) decides to keep whole chunks of P&P intact, retaining the original text and feel, despite the zombie apocalypse that's added into the equation. With that, it feels that we're basically watching two films at once, switching between the two every now and then. The parts that integrate both concepts organically are very few, while at times the mixture between the two elements is done unsuccessfully, resulting in caricature (e.g. fighting scene among sisters, while they discuss their marriage prospects).

I think this has a good basis and it had potential. I think it should have taken itself more seriously, despite the ridiculousness of the premise. If the P&P affiliation was looser and the zombie apocalypse scenario was worked out as the main storyline, then we could have had a great movie. I still liked the comedic feel though - Parson Collins (Matt Smith) in particular was great.

PS Still enjoyed it more than the Keira Knightly/Matthew MacFayden version though. Yep.

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