SECOND CHANCES // A FILM REVIEW OF "MODERN PERSUASION"
There has been several film adaptations of Jane Austen's final completed novel Persuasion, a classic romance set around second chances. Director Roger Mitchell made a fantastic adaptation in 1995 and ITV had television adaptation with Sally Hawkins in 2008. Even now, a new big screen version is set to be released next year. But this year, we have been treated to yet another adaption. This one, however, has a twist: it's set in the modern world. We've seen this before with Austen novels of course. Amy Heckerling's 1995 film Clueless, based on Austen's Emma, is the gold standard of modern adaptations. So how does MODERN PERSUASION, the newest update on the classic romance, end up? Well, let's take a dive in.
Alicia Witt plays Wren Cosgrove, a PR star of the company Keller Keller & Lynch. She's the Anne Elliot of the story, though the story here will only be faintly recognizable to those who have read the novel. But the basic set up is the same. In the novel, Anne broke off her engagement with Wentworth and years later gets a second chance with him. In our film, Wren dumps her college sweetheart Owen (Shane McRae) only to find him as a client years later, after she's made a name for herself. He's now a multimillionaire who's tech company, a Instagram/Twitter like clone, has a contract that's up for grabs. He brings it to Keller Keller & Lynch and although he claims he didn't know she's there, anyone who's seen even an episode of a sitcom knows he clearly did it on purpose. It's very clear that the two of them will get together by the end credits, but the journey will be entertainingly worth it, right? Well, no.
MODERN PERSUASION is, in the nicest terms, a very bad film. The dialogue never rises to anything an actual person would say and is so painfully unfunny you might mistake it for a drama. Or a funeral. Every shot of the film is over lit and every wall seems to be stark white, giving the film the feel of a sitcom pilot that was cancelled a few episodes in. Rarely do any of the characters have any chemistry, especially not Witt and McRae, who feel like strangers, even by the end. The character of Wren Cosgrove is so badly written that Witt seems to be embarrassed playing her at all. Her type is literally the architype of the romantic comedy girl: Friendless (except for work friends), only talks to her cat, a klutz everywhere she goes and dresses "frumpy" until one person gives her a dress, which instantly makes her a "hottie." And that's not even the most offensive part.
"Jokes" in the film seem to have come out of a bad joke book. The new receptionist, the sassy black woman in a minor role, is so sassy that she talks back to everyone, even on her first day. She also doesn't know how to transfer calls and doesn't know the name of the place that she works. Wren tells her that the name of the company is the initials of the partners and that she can answer the phone by saying, "KKL." To which the new hire replies, "I ain't saying KK nothing." Later, she finds out what the "L" stands for and there's a lynch joke. I wish I was kidding. There's also a #MeToo joke but it's okay cause a woman says it, right? And the sexism in the office is okay, cause women do it instead of men! This is all so funny! One character also embarrassingly uses dated dialogue like "You look Amaz," "So Jeal," and answers a question in a pitch meeting with "Probs." The only true saving grace is when Bebe Neuwirth shows up. It's actually impossible for Neuwirth to be bad in anything and even with clunky dialogue, she brightens every scene she's in. But she is the only one. Flat, painfully unfunny, casually offensive and worst of all boring, MODERN PERSUASION seems to exist only to show just how low the bar can go.
GRADE: F
BASED ON THE NOVEL "PERSUASION" BY Jane Austen SCREENPLAY BY Jonathan Lisecki, Barbara Radecki DIRECTED BY Alex Appel, Jonathan Lisecki STARRING Alicia Witt, Shane McRae, Bebe Neuwirth, Daniella Pineda, Dominic Rains, Liza Lapira, Mark Moses AVAILABLE ON VOD DECEMBER 18TH. FOR MORE INFO: http://www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/modern-persuasion/