Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I normally love period dramas, particularly those that enable me to "travel in time" to another time and place and experience, for a moment, what life was like in those times. I also like movies with an English/Scottish/Irish setting, so I looked forward to seeing this movie. Sadly, I was disappointed. I did not read the book this movie was based on, but based on reading the reviews here, I get the picture that the movie hardly resembled the book. Much of the plot did not make sense - this must have been the parts that the movie makers changed from the original. When plot does not make sense, the movie loses credibility. The performances were fine, but in general I felt that great talent had been wasted or not utilized to its potential. The movie features some really good actors who deliver good performances, but it's not enough to compensate for the inconsistencies in the storyline and what appear to be historical inaccuracies. The relatively happy ending is about all that was enjoyable about this movie.

It's perfectly apparent reading though a number of these user comments that almost none of those reviewers have read the novel. I share with another reviewer the view that a movie need not necessarily stick closely to the text that originally inspired it, and sometimes with some novels almost cannot and remain coherent or at all tight. Some movies are better than the novels their based on and others although they stray quite far afield are comparably good.There was no necessity to junk the original here though, and what's much more important, the result is FAR, FAR less interesting than the original, even considering just the story itself and not so much language, etc.Though this is I think quite a good movie, with strong acting, it's also a thoroughly conventional story. OK it's still somewhat unusual (though hardly unique) for the feminist heroine to have done considerable time as a prostitute (calling her a whore is entirely within the sense of the novel but seems contrary to the ultimately squeaky clean feminist spirit of the movie) but she was after all an orphaned little girls escaping clerical rape and pedophilia in the movie version, had few options, and didn't know what she was getting into (that last does mirror the book). But otherwise it's a thoroughly conventional tale that hardly strains our sympathies for Moll or makes us wonder how she kept or ever rediscovered her heart and soul – as the book most certainly does do.You see my problem is that not only could a movie have closely followed the plot and events of the novel (chopping some side stories of course), but it would have been a FAR, FAR more interesting film if had. Defoe's (he also wrote Robinson Crusoe) famous subtitle may give you some flavor: "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, &c. Who Was Born in Newgate, and During a Life of Continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, Besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife (Whereof Once to her Own Brother) Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at Last Grew Rich, Liv'd Honest, and Died a Penitent." The novel's Moll wasn't just a whore, but determined to become a damn good and successful one. She threw herself into her work unreservedly – unlike in the movie. She was an enthusiastic thief, with her own rationale and justification. She married five times, often with a gold diggers purpose. She ended up in colonial Virginia in its early days, when fortunes could and were being made by all kinds of clever people (though almost always by men), and made hers from a beginning there as an indentured servant (as a judicial punishment), that is, a quasi slave for a period of a few years.The Moll of the novel was a true female adventurer. Like most males who have been through and seen so much, and who had risen based on her cold calculations about people and by using people and their weaknesses, we wonder if she can ever really feel again, but she can and does, when she gets some security. The real Moll Flanders is a fascinating female figure, and to write so sympathetically (though not without some deprecating and ironic asides from time to time) was truly revolutionary in the early 18th century. History of literature aside, she remains a fascinating character – much more so than this movie's rather Disney feminist heroine, who never wants to do any of the bad things she does and stops doing them as soon as she possibly can, consistent with her love commitment, etc., etc.Interestingly when a movie was done of Tom Jones, who was in some ways a rather similar if a bit less sympathy challenging male character living in more or less the same time period, the movie stuck much more closely to the original story - and that film was done some thirty-five years earlier. Those two characters, Moll Flanders and Tom Jones were perhaps the two most notorious sexual rakes of the highly popular early English novel. Too bad the even more interesting female rake is so toned down for full or facile feminist hagiography purposes, I suppose – that is to say, for full enthusiastic acceptance by the widest possible contemporary female and other audience.I only hope someone will do a movie that is or could be entitled "The Real Moll Flanders".

This movie is only barely similar to the book, "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders" written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1722. So if you've read the book don't worry about it spoiling the movie for you. In fact the movie is spoiled all by itself. What a waste of time.Yes, the cast is good and I think they did as much with this movie as they could. A story like this one is takes skillful telling and this seemed to be put together no better than Frankenstein's monster. Just one scene attached to another from beginning to end.Even in the book Moll Flanders was not a sympathetic character but I believe they do try to make her one in the movie. They failed. Moll in the movie flows from one moment to the next without ever really taking charge of her life, very unlike the character in the book.The entire movie is no better than the average television soap opera. Characters display extreme emotions that didn't seem realistic and too often without us really understanding why. Groundwork was not laid for many of the scenes and so the movie left me wondering 'why did they do that' for about two seconds. And then I realized I really didn't care.A good cast and a movie based on a good book, it really should have been so much better.

I watched this movie when it came to TV, trying to catch the interest that it may have. But actually I found a 20th century mentality wrong placed in the 18th century, too many stereotypes to consider this film really good, vulgarity used as a sample of good acting and moral used always to define hypocritical and obscure people. The fight against the moral of the time was a very used argument in the 1990s movies to destroy (or at least distort seriously) the History (watch also some other movies of that genre made in those times and you'll know what I mean). Definitely, don't expect a good movie from this version (especially if you have read the novel or seen the 1960s version): it's got no relationship at all.