We saw Vanity Fair last night. My husband said it should've been called Vanity Project, as in Reese Witherspoon's. It did kind of seem like it was largely an excuse for her to look lovely in period dresses (which I enjoyed, but it's not a good basis for a movie). It fell victim to the usual problem with turning literature into movies - trying to cram a 600-or-so page novel into a movie. It was really, really disjointed, leaving a lot of things unresolved or confusing. Often it looked like she barely had time to get to know a man before he was confessing his love for her or, in one case, marrying her in a scene we didn't even see. The main silly thing was that it was supposed to take place over about 20 years and Reese didn't age a day. Her son was supposed to be 20 at the end and she looked about 25. Also, from what I've heard, the book doesn't have her having a child (or doesn't make a big deal of it) but because Reese got pregnant during filming, they had to write it in, which took even more time away from the book's actual plot.

I'm still scarred by the film they made of Jane Eyre in the 90's. I can't even remember all the stuff they cut out, but it was barely recognizable. And Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma ticked me off because Emma wasn't supposed to be all blonde and beautiful, she's described as "handsome." Harriet, the beautiful friend she tries to marry off, is unmarriageable because she's poor and from an unknown family, but apparently that doesn't sell to today's crowd where beauty is all that matters, so they had to make her into a frump instead. Maybe I need to stop seeing movies based on books, they're almost always disappointing.