Review: Emma

(I must say, good call filmmakers for releasing your first-run movies on Amazon during the pandemic.)

I was complaining to someone that the trailer for Emma looked like they were capitalizing on the physical humor, and that frightened me, because that would be like a trailer for the Three Stooges that capitalized on the wordplay.

I was wrong, so wrong. This is the best version of Emma ever. It s a confection. I am so sad Mom died twelve years before this movie was made, because it had all her key components for a period drama: costumes and hairstyles and tea food. I counted three cakes which were not there to move the plot along, they were just there to have a very tall ornate cake.

Casting:

The new Emma is an actress I have never seen before who makes Gwenyth Paltrow look fat and lumbering. She looks perfect.

The new Mr. Wodehouse is Bill Nighy. I was dismayed when I saw him bounding down steps in the trailer, and thought they were trying to make him healthy. They do not. There are several delightful scenes with screens.

My one quibble is that the new Mr Knightley is too young to be Mr. Knightley. Isn’t he supposed to be fifteen years older? You can blame my father figure issues, but the scenes where he’s chastising her are not sexy at all.

I quite enjoyed it. I’m sure I will enjoy it even more in years to come, when the school girls don’t make me think of The Handmaid’s Tale and the one footman no longer reminds me of Seth Meyers. It made at least one evening of The Confinement more pleasant.