I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve
The Hallmark Jane Austen marathon continues with An American in Austen, which premiered on February 17. It's the third of four installments in the network's most ambitious attempt yet to dishonor the legacy of one of the greatest artists to wield the English language.
The plot of An American in Austen is pretty high-concept for Hallmark, so that's something. Harriet (Eliza Bennett - no really, that's the actor's actual given name) has just responded to the proposal of her loving boyfriend Ethan (Bert Seymour, whose attempt to swallow his British accent makes him sound like the Swedish Chef on quaaludes) with a big fat "maybe." She's so in love with the works of Jane Austen and Pride & Prejudice specifically that she thinks a man needs to be exactly like Mr. Darcy in order to be marriage material even though she's at the very least got a good solid Mr. Bingley on her hands.
Anyway, she makes a wish to have her own Darcy and bada-bing, bada-boom, she is magically transported into the world of the novel, where the Bennet family has taken her in as a visiting cousin from America. While wrestling with her feelings for Mr. Darcy (Nicholas Bishop, miscast and exuding all the sexual and romantic charisma of a pickled herring) made flesh, she realizes that the choices she makes may affect the outcome of the novel - and her chances of getting back home.
When you're just writing it all out like that, the plot seems pretty clear and obvious. However, it is much more obvious to any half-awake viewer than it seems to be the screenplay itself. The story has no idea what shape it's supposed to be taking, and the more the world-building is fleshed out, the less the decisions of the central character make any sort of sense. For example, once she learns she needs to get the plot back on track, Harriet tries to get Jane (Catherine Hannay, who is visibly trying to shove aside her discomfort with contorting herself into this character who has none of the traits of the actual Jane Bennet) to rush out to London and confront Mr. Bingley (Toby Alexander-Smith, who's much more comfortable in a good, solid himbo role) once he leaves town, instead of letting things play out as they do in the book.
The plot is a solid concept, if a bit careworn, and I can see why this pitch got greenlit. However, once you pitch a movie, the sad fact of the matter is that you then need to fill out 90 minutes of material. This slipshod, ill-considered mess just ain't the way to do it.
The casting of the Pride & Prejudice characters, as you may have noticed, is also pretty flawed. Nell Barlow does machete her way toward playing a reliable version of the actual Elizabeth Bennet about a third of the way through and Joseph Richardson mops the floor with the gimme role of Mr. Collins, but beyond that, the casting is kind of a nightmare. And then they had the bravery to invent an entirely new Duchess character so they could shoehorn in a random cameo by Sarah Ferguson, who I suppose didn't want to play the tailor-made "cameo from an older woman" P&P character Lady Catherine de Bourgh because Catherine is too mean or something. Describing Duchess Fergie's performance as "wooden" would do a disservice to wood, which is useful and important, everything this cameo is not.
Thankfully, despite everything that's going wrong around her, Eliza Bennett is a startlingly good lead actor for a Hallmark movie. She's not half-bad at delivering her emotional moments, like a sad monologue about her love life or an inspiring speech to Mary Bennet. And she excels in quite a few comic moments, breathing life into a script that frankly doesn't really deserve it. I'd even go so far as to say that the physical comedy moment where she noisly eats a cracker might just be the funniest moment in English-language filmmaking to happen in February 2024. Low praise? Maybe. But praise nonetheless.
She even sells a pandering Taylor Swift joke! And get this. I only found out at the end that she is also a Brit doing an American accent, so she snuck past my pretty good radar for figuring out non-American actors' tells. All things considered, it's a tremendous performance. That's enough for the movie to end up somewhere within a few miles of my good side, even though there's not much else about it worth remembering.
OK, maybe one thing. Ethan's proposal involves him singing a parody of a Foreigner song while walking past little displays he's made of artifacts from their relationship. First, the admission that real-life pop culture exists is always a breath of fresh air in a Hallmark movie. Second, those artifacts are thoroughly believable props that bring a series of goofy relationship inside jokes to life. It's stuff like a Post-It note that says "Meep <3," which perfectly evokes the kind of weirdo, not-funny-to-anyone-else shit that builds up like sediment in a long-term relationship. So even if the filmmakers don't understand Austen really at all, at least they understand love even a tiny bit.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about ‘80s slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
The plot of An American in Austen is pretty high-concept for Hallmark, so that's something. Harriet (Eliza Bennett - no really, that's the actor's actual given name) has just responded to the proposal of her loving boyfriend Ethan (Bert Seymour, whose attempt to swallow his British accent makes him sound like the Swedish Chef on quaaludes) with a big fat "maybe." She's so in love with the works of Jane Austen and Pride & Prejudice specifically that she thinks a man needs to be exactly like Mr. Darcy in order to be marriage material even though she's at the very least got a good solid Mr. Bingley on her hands.
Anyway, she makes a wish to have her own Darcy and bada-bing, bada-boom, she is magically transported into the world of the novel, where the Bennet family has taken her in as a visiting cousin from America. While wrestling with her feelings for Mr. Darcy (Nicholas Bishop, miscast and exuding all the sexual and romantic charisma of a pickled herring) made flesh, she realizes that the choices she makes may affect the outcome of the novel - and her chances of getting back home.
When you're just writing it all out like that, the plot seems pretty clear and obvious. However, it is much more obvious to any half-awake viewer than it seems to be the screenplay itself. The story has no idea what shape it's supposed to be taking, and the more the world-building is fleshed out, the less the decisions of the central character make any sort of sense. For example, once she learns she needs to get the plot back on track, Harriet tries to get Jane (Catherine Hannay, who is visibly trying to shove aside her discomfort with contorting herself into this character who has none of the traits of the actual Jane Bennet) to rush out to London and confront Mr. Bingley (Toby Alexander-Smith, who's much more comfortable in a good, solid himbo role) once he leaves town, instead of letting things play out as they do in the book.
The plot is a solid concept, if a bit careworn, and I can see why this pitch got greenlit. However, once you pitch a movie, the sad fact of the matter is that you then need to fill out 90 minutes of material. This slipshod, ill-considered mess just ain't the way to do it.
The casting of the Pride & Prejudice characters, as you may have noticed, is also pretty flawed. Nell Barlow does machete her way toward playing a reliable version of the actual Elizabeth Bennet about a third of the way through and Joseph Richardson mops the floor with the gimme role of Mr. Collins, but beyond that, the casting is kind of a nightmare. And then they had the bravery to invent an entirely new Duchess character so they could shoehorn in a random cameo by Sarah Ferguson, who I suppose didn't want to play the tailor-made "cameo from an older woman" P&P character Lady Catherine de Bourgh because Catherine is too mean or something. Describing Duchess Fergie's performance as "wooden" would do a disservice to wood, which is useful and important, everything this cameo is not.
Thankfully, despite everything that's going wrong around her, Eliza Bennett is a startlingly good lead actor for a Hallmark movie. She's not half-bad at delivering her emotional moments, like a sad monologue about her love life or an inspiring speech to Mary Bennet. And she excels in quite a few comic moments, breathing life into a script that frankly doesn't really deserve it. I'd even go so far as to say that the physical comedy moment where she noisly eats a cracker might just be the funniest moment in English-language filmmaking to happen in February 2024. Low praise? Maybe. But praise nonetheless.
She even sells a pandering Taylor Swift joke! And get this. I only found out at the end that she is also a Brit doing an American accent, so she snuck past my pretty good radar for figuring out non-American actors' tells. All things considered, it's a tremendous performance. That's enough for the movie to end up somewhere within a few miles of my good side, even though there's not much else about it worth remembering.
OK, maybe one thing. Ethan's proposal involves him singing a parody of a Foreigner song while walking past little displays he's made of artifacts from their relationship. First, the admission that real-life pop culture exists is always a breath of fresh air in a Hallmark movie. Second, those artifacts are thoroughly believable props that bring a series of goofy relationship inside jokes to life. It's stuff like a Post-It note that says "Meep <3," which perfectly evokes the kind of weirdo, not-funny-to-anyone-else shit that builds up like sediment in a long-term relationship. So even if the filmmakers don't understand Austen really at all, at least they understand love even a tiny bit.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about ‘80s slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
