ViewGuide

Created Jun 15, 2016 10:11PM PST • Edited Jun 16, 2016 01:59AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   Extravagantly praised and extravagantly mounted, Love & Friendship proves a bit dull. OK, extravagantly dull. Jane Austen wrote about women whose fortune depended on marriage, comically albeit dully here.

   Kate Beckinsale & Chloë Savigny play mean girls who get over on husbands, children and everyone else. Beckinsale hits a career peak as a widow who needs money, even if she’s often impossible to understand.

   Understated in the extreme, slow to develop, yet delicious and undeniably gorgeous, Love & Friendship proves an underperforming suitor. It is a perfectly suitable date movie, so long as dinner is really good.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Kate Beckinsale does everything but suck blood as a highborn Lady in late 1700s England, the land of landed gentry. The extravagantly lovely, London-born Kate is a natural as a Georgian MILF on the make.

   Chloë Savigny dishes with the best of them, here an American living in England some 20 years after 1776. Integrity wasn’t her strong suit. Savigny stoops to conquer, especially costumed for a heaving bosom.

   The distinguished cast includes Xavier Samuel, Stephen Fry, Emma Greenwell, Morfydd Clark, James Fleet, Jemma Redgrave of the thespian Redgraves, Tom Bennett, Justin Edwards & Jenn Murray.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    OK 2.5

11. Direction Good 3.0

12. Play Barely OK 2.0

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.4

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.7

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0