It is a truth universally acknowledged that most people will do anything to make money. And really, who’s to blame the editor at Quirk Books who first suggested to author Seth Grahame-Smith (he of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter infamy) that there was great potential in mashing up Jane Austen’s enduringly popular 19th-century novel Pride and Prejudice with the living dead genre? Ladies must live, bottom lines must be met, and the trends of the moment must be exploited.
Once the final product—titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and released in April 2009—became a runaway bestseller, there seemed little point in letting out a Chris Crocker-esque “Leave Jane Austen alone!” But what will those innumerable readers think of this long-delayed movie adaptation, which has gone through so many iterations (at highest profile it was to star Natalie Portman and be directed by David O. Russell) that it now resembles something of a reanimated corpse itself? Lumbering, lifeless, and—strange thing to say about a cadaver—almost entirely charmless.
Unfortunately there’s the matter of the brain-craving zombies the duo have to deal with in almost every scene. These ravenous stiffs have swarmed across 19th-century Britain and are now very close to bringing about the apocalypse. It should come as no surprise that Elizabeth’s other potential beau, the manipulative Mr. Wickham (Jack Huston), is in large part responsible. Nor should it be a bombshell that the original book’s sharp social satire makes for an awkward fit with the demands of a tale about gluttonous ghouls from beyond the grave.
0 coment�rios: