Pride and Prejudice, Cut aka Becoming Ms. Bennet: Pride & Prejudice (2010)

(On Cable TV, May 2020) I wasn’t expecting much from made-for-TV movie Pride and Prejudice, Cut: it’s a modestly budgeted romantic comedy with little-known actors, deliberately silly plot developments, an audience-baiting affection for Jane Austen, and a tone that speaks either to young women or their moms. This being said, it is very cute and likable: pushing the whole “hiring actresses because of their number of social media followers” thing, it follows an American vlogging influencer after she’s picked to play Elizabeth Bennet in a new adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Except that she can’t get the English accent right; except that her co-star doesn’t respect her as an actress; except that, at the first sign of trouble, she ends up criticizing the production and gets chastised for it. (What did she expect? Oh, right: made-for-TV contrived plotting.) At least the film is on firmer footing when introducing the expected metafictional mirroring of Austen’s narrative onto the modern-day moviemaking plot. There have been many “frothy rom-com redoing Austen in modern times” movies, and if you want to be picky about it, then Austenland did it better. But this is a subgenre based on familiarity, not novelty and what ends up on-screen in Pride and Prejudice, Cut is good enough for a few smiles and satisfy the viewers’ romantic expectations.