“Becoming Jane” is an unbecoming tribute to a legend. It aggrandizes what most scholars say was a minor seasonal flirtation in the little-known life story of Jane Austen and makes it into only a poor woman’s “Pride and Prejudice.”

It is nice to see a summer movie about a subject of substance with pretty period-art direction. But this oversimplified and underwhelming piece twists an obscure early episode between the real Jane (a lackluster Anne Hathaway) and a neighbor’s visiting relative Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy) into a record of the alleged seminal moment of emotional and literary awakening for the original chick-lit authoress. As directed by Julian Jarrold, loosely adapted from Jon Spence’s 2003 biography “Becoming Jane Austen,” it embellishes one brief tete-a-tete into a narrative meant to show the personal source of her early 19th-century British novels’ running themes.