Persuasion

Ass-Headed Bottom: The trick with Jane Austen movies is that their directors must use gorgeous and British actors and actresses to draw our attention away from the fact that we are watching superficial, unnecessary, thoughtless film adaptations of Jane Austen novels, which are justly famous for the unspoken, unspeakably clever thinking that goes on in them. We're pretty much like the ogling crowd at Bath admiring the clothes and unable to read the heroine's thoughts. But Persuasion--the best of the novels--is the least adaptable to film, precisely because too much of the sexy veneer, having aged, has had to be replaced with even lonelier thinking. So it's like any other Jane Austen movie, except the heroine looks like an old maid and the hero looks like Frankenstein's monster. Spot on and therefore unwatchable.