Women bonding as they help each other through relationship trauma? Check.
Adorable-looking, well-meaning guys in need of good women to enlighten them? Check.
A pat, romantic happily-ever-after ending? Check.
References to Jane Austen? Check.
Indeed, “The Jane Austen Book Club” isn’t just a chick flick. It’s the very definition of a chick flick — and not a bad one, really. But that label cuts both ways.
On the one hand, you’ve got an ensemble of enjoyable second-tier actresses playing decent, real people in relatable contemporary situations to create dramatic conflict. It’s an easy-going, painless bit of entertainment. There’s no need to resort to the facile fantasy elements, violence and over-plotting that Hollywood serves up in typical “guy movies.” On the other hand, this minor gabfest organized around the monthly book club meetings of an Austen-loving gaggle of northern Californians is not exactly crackling with fast-moving excitement or suspenseful unpredictability — unless you consider delectable pretty boy Hugh Dancy and aging hunk Jimmy Smits as the female equivalent of eye-popping special effects.
Screenwriter Robin Swicord —who did the last screen version of the original template for all chick lit, “Little Women” — takes her first turn as director for this adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler’s bestselling 2004 novel. Each of her characters is in need of a little amorous reform when the unlikely group’s warmhearted matriarch, Bernadette (Kathy Baker), ends up as the glue that pulls them together to study each of Austen’s novels in turn.
Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) has just been dumped by her longtime husband, Daniel (Smits). Sylvia’s beautiful daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace) is an adventurous young lesbian who too easily puts herself at risk in sport and her heart at risk in love. Silvia’s best friend, perennially single 40-something Jocelyn (Maria Bello), recruits the sole male member of the book club. She hopes that the sensitive, financially secure younger man Grigg (Hugh Dancy) will tickle Silvia’s fancy and jumpstart her out of her divorce funk. Unfortunately, before she can fully execute that fix-up plan, Jocelyn starts to fall for the hottie herself.
Lastly, there’s the club’s most Austen-ian character, the repressed high school French teacher Prudie (“The Devil Wears Prada’s” wonderful Emily Blunt). She’s got the mother from hell (Lynn Redgrave), a macho husband and a terrifying crush on one of her male students.
Literate moviegoers will delight in how cleverly the dialogue weaves in detail of the classic author’s characters and themes, making them relevant to the angst of modern love. One character even has a pivotal, passionate moment of moral torment in which she asks herself, “What Would Jane Do?”
Well, she’d probably appreciate the tribute found in this “Club.”
‘The Jane Austen Book Club’
***
Starring: Maria Bello, Amy Brenneman, Hugh Dancy, Maggie Grace
Director: Robin Swicord
Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, brief strong language and some drug use
Running time: 103 minutes
