The Jane Austen Book Club !! 1/2
(PG-13)
A group of women meets monthly to discuss Jane Austen books and compare the works to their own lives. Grigg (Hugh Dancy), the only male in the group, has his eye on Jocelyn (Maria Bello), who keeps trying to pawn him off on her recently separated sister Sylvia (Amy Brenneman).
Catch it: Yeah, the usual cliches abound. The women make flan to cheer themselves up. Prudie’s (Emily Blunt) beer-drinking, sports-watching husband spouts tough-to-stomach lines such as “Our world is an English village.” But “Book Club” has done its homework on the nature of tricky relationships and has more real-seeming people and sensible decisions than most pieces of wish-fulfillment nonsense.
Skip it: If, like Sylvia, you also worry that as you age, your “body will become a museum” and you don’t want a reminder. Hey, even dusty museums are sometimes worth exploring!
Bottom line: Much of “The Jane Austen Book Club” drove me crazy, yet somehow I kinda liked it. Responsibility for that lies almost entirely with Blunt, who embodies all of Prudie’s annoyance, frustration and sporadic glimmers of possibility with only a smirk and a roll of the eyes.
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mpais@tribune.com
