A few years ago I saw the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. It was based on a book that, along with several others, rode on the backs of the first 'let's add zombies to well known books and/or historical characters' sub-genre that was started by the book on which this film was based.
That film was pretty feeble and dull. The focus was very much on the fighting with vampires and it seemed, the majority of the time was spent on those sort of scenes.
This was very much better. The book, I remember, was the first of this mini-genre and the main reason why it was so entertaining was that,as I recall, much of the original words, style and language of the original was kept and the zombie element was added to that but in the appropriate Austen style. The opening sentence was for example, an amusing parody of the original and this was very smartly sustained by the rest of the book.
This highly entertaining film did the same thing. It began with that parody opening sentence and everything else spoken was, or sounded, authentically Austenian. I do not know the text well enough to know how close it was. If not, it certainly sounded very authentic...and so those moments when it was not really stood out. I recall a couple of occasions where characters announced that they 'were on their way' for example which for me really jarred. Fair point Debora Cheetham Hepburn?
The settings were gorgeous...worthy of a BBC adaptation (perhaps they had been so used...I must research) and the accents perfectly cut-glass aristocratic. What was also particularly admirable was the way that all elements were appropriate..the dances and music were exactly right, the interior lighting was either natural or effective candlelight for the evening and the costumes excellent...albeit with some amusing changes...the long dresses had an open side to allow the girls to easily access the sharpened knives they carried strapped to their thighs!
Many details and scene were very funny indeed...we first meet the Bennet sisters in a group in their house (as in the novel)but here, instead of doing whatever they were in the novel,they are sitting around cleaning their pistols and sharpening their zombie-slaying blades! The Revd.Collins is very amusingly portrayed by Matt Smith (a Dr Who?) while the take on Lady Catherine de Bourgh is marvellous. I won't spoil it for you.
Enormous fun then although I am not sure how the sequel, flagged up in an end credit sequence, will work as there is no original on which to base it. I wonder if the other Austen-zombie mash-up ( Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters) would work. I have not read it.
Ignore the UK press reviews by the way. They are very pissily patronising with no sense of humour.