In this Dork Reporter’s opin­ion, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­ity is the best of breed of Jane Austen film adap­ta­tions. Please note, how­ever, there are two very good rea­sons to dis­credit my opin­ion on this subject:

I. Despite my Eng­lish major, I am ashamed to admit I have read only one Jane Austen novel: Emma. Yeah, I know, I’ve got to get work­ing on that.

II. Sense and Sen­si­bil­ity fea­tures two of this Dork Reporter’s all-time favorite movie crushes: Emma Thomp­son and Kate Winslet. Any film fea­tur­ing just one of these Eng­lish roses auto­mat­i­cally earns extra credit. Any film fea­tur­ing Emma and Kate, together, equals porn (espe­cially if they hop into bed together, as they do here… granted, as sis­ters keep­ing their toes warm, but still!). Any film fea­tur­ing Emma and Kate, plus a screen­play by Emma, equals orgasm.

Kate’s got a bee in her bonnet

A few extra notes:

• Dork Report guest com­men­ta­tor (and first-class Austen afi­cionado) Snark­bait has coined the best phrase for this genre: “Regency Era froth”
• Actor Greg Wise (John Willoughby) later became Mr. Emma Thomp­son, after Ken­neth Branaugh fool­ishly let her get away
• Hugh Grant’s trade­mark stam­mer, per­sis­tent inter­est in the car­pet, and out-of-control hair are still charm­ing even in 18^th Cen­tury sur­round­ings. But it is dif­fi­cult to sti­fle a snicker when the dev­il­ish Grant, as Edward Fer­rars, expresses an inter­est in join­ing the Church
• I wish I had Alan Rickman’s (Col. Bran­don) vocal cords
• Hey, look! It’s Tom Wilkin­son in a cameo as the soon-to-be-late Mr. Dash­wood! The Dork Report thinks Wilkin­son is one of the finest actors work­ing today
• required view­ing: Emma Thompson’s 1996 Best Adapted Screen­play Oscar accep­tance speech (not on YouTube as of this writ­ing, but here is the text)

It ain’t easy being sensible

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.