# Jane Austen Book Club (spoilers)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jane-austen-book-club-spoilers/422732
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 15, 2007, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jane-austen-book-club-spoilers/422732 "2007-10-15T00:48:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2007, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jane-austen-book-club-spoilers/422732/1 "2007-10-15T00:48:56Z")
I saw _The Jane Austen Book Club_ this afternoon with a girlfriend and loved it. Has anyone else seen it? My favorite things…
First of all, it passed the [Alison Bechdel Rule](http://alisonbechdel.blogspot.com/2005/08/rule.html) of having 1) at least two female characters 2) who talk to each other 3) about something other than a man.
And while it was a woman-centered film, it didn’t bash men. The characters did on occasion, but the men in the film were portrayed as sympathetically as the women.
And, speaking of men, I thought it was wonderful that Grigg, a geeky science fiction nerd, was the romantic hero. I adored that Ursula LeGuin was a romantic plot point. As a Jane Austen fan _and_ an SF geek, this pushed all the right buttons for me.
Anybody else have any thoughts?
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2007, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jane-austen-book-club-spoilers/422732/2 "2007-10-15T05:31:18Z")
I saw it. I am admittedly not the target audience for this but I found it to be pretty much a standard chick flick. I thought the men were unrealistic (the way they could be so easily converted into Jane Austen fans was the stuff of fantasy), the ending was just a little too cozy and tight and I really hated the French teacher woman. She was kind of a whiner and I thought her little semi-affair with a student at her high school was skin-crawlingly inappropriate, unsympathetic and unprofessional. A real teacher who acted like her would be fired if not jailed. My distaste for that character in particular tainted the whole movie for me. Not only that but the student himself was such an insufferably smarmy little sleazeball that I couldn’t understand why an ostensible intelligent, educated woman would be interested in him. It wasn’t even like her husband was a bad guy. He was a pretty nice guy who kept trying to understand her and communicate with her but she wanted to go all Mary Kay Letourneau on the dude. I thought it was kind of offensive that the audience was supposed to view that character sympathetically.
Bahhh…I just wasn’t the target demographic for this. I wanted to see a gunfight or something. Women sitting around talking about their feelings just doesn’t do it for me.
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### Author:  [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2007, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jane-austen-book-club-spoilers/422732/3 "2007-10-17T21:12:42Z")
I gotta agree with DtC’s feelings about Emily Blunt’s rather insufferable character (especially the rather pointless Lynn Redgrave digression), but I’m a sucker for any appearance by Maria Bello, and it was nice to see a pseudo-_NYPD Blue_ cast reunion (Brenneman, Smits). It did a fairly good job of having the arcs act as counterpoint to the Austen novels, and I appreciated how they didn’t dumb down the lit talk too much (though obviously, if you haven’t read JA, you’re at a strict disadvantage). I found the rest of the women interesting and likeable, and though the character-juggling wasn’t as deftly handled as in, say, _The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants_, I enjoyed it and found it a good deal better than the rank pandering that is typical of the Bullock/Hudson/Witherspoon/et al “chick flick” ilk.
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2007, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jane-austen-book-club-spoilers/422732/4 "2007-10-17T21:15:18Z")
I admit I like Maria Bello in the movie. Hers was the only character I found tolerable.