So much average

Absolutely the worst movie.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is the first Jane Eyre adaptation I could not bring myself to finish watching (and I've seen most of them). It's a very short adaptation, so I didn't expect much, but on the whole, I thought it was decently scripted if a little mutilated. They cleverly employed Jane as narrator to comment on things so they could condense the story without someone not familiar with the book missing vital information (an idea they nicked from the 1944 adaptation with Orson Welles). What ruined the whole thing for me was Ciaran Hinds godawful Rochester. I have absolutely no clue what went wrong there because I know he would have been capable of doing well (I say him in Persuasion and his Captain Wentworth kept me at constant smoulder alert so it can't have been lack of acting skill). Either he was really really angry to be in this film or the direction was bad. Whatever the reason, his Rochester is rude, belligerent and cannot speak without starting to yell at some point. It irritated me so badly I just couldn't finish watching the movie so I switched it off after three quarters (but getting that far even was torture) I'm not a fan of Samantha Mortons Jane either, she is too rude as well, and in the situations were she isn't rude she just stares blankly into the distance. And her make up is awful, I know Jane is supposed to be pale but her looks are so pasty she looks like she had some dodgy fish for dinner and might throw up any second. And what's with that "pressing-gawping-fish-mouth-to-face" excuse for a passionate kiss??? I laughed out loud and that is not what's supposed to happen to the viewer during the proposal scene. Another reviewer stated Hinds made a terrible Rochester but not as bad as William Hurts. Though I agree that William Hurts Rochester is not great I much prefer his rendition of Rochester to this unendurable tripe.

I will aim to judge this Jane Eyre on its own terms, as no matter no poor it is as an adaptation it at least deserves that. Of the Jane Eyres I've seen, this one was my least favourite and the most disappointing(I've not yet seen the 2006 version). It is not as dull as Zeffirelli's film, but I found the 1973, 1983 and 1943 versions much better cast than this and the characters more interesting and the story much more passionate in the 1970 and 2011 films.Charlotte Bronte's novel is one of the outstanding works in literature ever, and because the story is so good and the character of Rochester so interesting it is wholly deserving of good treatment if not entire fidelity.This Jane Eyre is not a complete and utter travesty. It does look wonderful with gorgeous scenery, an evocative atmosphere though Thornfield could have been gloomier and beautifully tailored costumes. The music is good too if not as haunting and atmospheric as the 1970 and 1943 films. Of the cast, the best is Gemma Jones who is absolutely marvellous as Mrs Fairfax, one of the few characters in the adaptation that is given any degree of respect.However, the rest of the acting is disappointing. This is especially true in the case of Ciaron Hinds, whose Rochester is almost completely lacking in subtlety or complexity with no attention whatsoever to any possible nuances. Samantha Morton fares a little better, she has the delicacy of Jane to a pat and she is suitably plain, however I can't say she was any more than that because Jane is too bold and insubordinate here. Blanche, Brocklehurst and St John are also nowhere near as interesting. Blanche is nowhere near as haughty, more should have been done with the conflict between Jane and Brocklehurst and St John is too sympathetic.The direction is misguided also, not allowing the characters to be any more involving than they were. I think also that the direction was a big part of the problem with Hinds' performance, because Hinds was also in Persuasion and he was superb in that and that was because the direction and adaptation were great.Jane Eyre(1997) suffers from being too short, too rushed and too condensed. The book is a very difficult one to translate to screen, because the story and characters have so much to them and also the book is big. 2 hours in my opinion is not enough to do the story justice, at least a mini-series of about 11-12 episodes would do. Consequently, things were inevitably cut out, changed or condensed, and the things left in were not very well explored especially the attitudes of the times and characters' motivations such as Rochester's affection for Adele did not make sense.Pacing was too rushed for me, I think to make the passion believable the pace should be quite measured without being deathly slow. This adaptation suffered from moving the story on too quickly to suit the lean running time, which explains why there wasn't enough passion and chemistry between the leads and also the ending should have been much more grim and mysterious, the stilted writing stopped it from being any more than that.Speaking of the writing, that was possibly the adaptation's most disappointing asset. Everything is really stilted and updated, dialogue doesn't flow from one line to the next effectively and some unintentionally funny moments and jarring dialogue in terms of the period Jane Eyre is set in and the type of language used severely undermine the characters and their motivations. Rochester especially in the second half of the adaptation suffers from this.All in all, very disappointing, too rushed, too short, too condensed, too underdeveloped and too stilted. Thank goodness for the production values, music and Jones, the adaptation could've been worse otherwise. 4/10 Bethany Cox

The people who wrote this miniseries clearly read the Cliff's Notes instead of the book. I've read "Jane Eyre" half a dozen times; I turned this movie off maybe halfway through. I spent most of the time marveling at how the producers skipped over classic lines and moments from the book to invent dialogue.They glossed over Jane's early days -- her childhood and time at school -- and then rewrote the love story. The way Jane meets Rochester is wrong. His feelings about his French ward and the story behind her are wrong. The interactions among characters are wrong.See, what the filmmakers forgot is that the characters in this book have a strong sense of propriety. They are formal. Ranks mattered, and people behaved accordingly -- the passionate yet meek Jane and the moody yet tractable Mr. Rochester never forget their stations, and that influences their interactions. Samantha Morton's Jane is outrageously insubordinate and demanding from the moment she formally meets Rochester. It's simply out of character. Ciaran Hinds plays a decent Mr. Rochester, but he lays on the Grade-A jerk too heavily. Rochester isn't mean to Jane even if he is a bit gruff. Even the minor characters don't look the part. The best casting is Gemma Jones as kindly Mrs. Fairfax; she does a great job.I've always believed that film adaptations of books should honor the originals and follow them as closely as possible. You shouldn't take the characters and alter them to fit your audience, you shouldn't invent parts just to suit your needs, and you shouldn't cut parts for the same reason. This book has endured for more than a hundred years; it clearly has something going for it. Why mess with that? If you have read "Jane Eyre," this movie is extremely disappointing. If you haven't read the book, it's not much better. The filmmakers get to the love story as quickly as possible, but Morton and Hinds lack chemistry, and their scenes of passion are actually quite funny.Give this one a miss.

This 1997 TV production is called "Jane Eyre", but except for a similarity to the plot of the novel there is preciously little in this film to remind you that you are indeed watching an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's literary masterpiece. How they managed to get every single character of the novel wrong - except for Pilot, who is well cast - is a complete mystery to me, but they did. This is the more a pity because with Samantha Morton and Ciaràn Hinds they had two good actors, who even physically fit their roles well, but, alas, the greatest talent is of no avail when the concept of the characters is as wrong as in this adaptation. Samantha Morton - young, delicate and plain enough - looks like Jane Eyre, but does not play Jane Eyre. Her Jane is far too bold, even disrespectful at times, self-confident and self-satisfied, bossy and pert. Gone is the interesting duality of Jane's character in the novel, her outward shyness, guardedness and modesty on the one hand and her fire and passion on the other. Morton's Jane speaks her mind boldly right from the beginning and never stops doing so throughout the film. There is no subtlety in her performance, her Jane undergoes no change and no development. The same is sadly also true for the character of Mr. Rochester. Believe it or not, but they indeed managed to turn one of the most interesting and complex figures of English literature into a brute and a bully. Luckily Ciaràn Hinds possesses some charisma, but otherwise nothing links him to the eloquent and fascinating character of the novel. Not the slightest attempt was made to explore the depths of Rochester's character, his many contradicting facets, his moodiness, his inner struggle, his humour and his tenderness. The Rochester of the novel is admittedly insolent and harsh at times, but never the unrefined, snarling brute Ciaràn Hinds makes him. Yet Hinds is even worse at playing the loving Rochester, and the only feeling he manages to convey is lust.Unfortunately the misrepresentation of the characters is not limited to the leading roles: Blanche, besides being blonde, is not in the least haughty enough, not to mention the fact that she is nice to Adèle, St. John is all smiles and kindness, and the role of Mrs. Fairfax has been unnecessarily puffed up, probably due to the fact that she is played by dear Gemma Jones. Yet some scenes less with Mrs. Fairfax fussing around and some scenes more between Jane and Rochester would have been very helpful to make the audience understand why the two latter fall in love in the first place.As far as language is concerned this production is another victim of the delusion of some scriptwriters who either think that they can improve on Charlotte Brontë's brilliant language or that her 19th century English has to be simplified to become digestible for a modern audience. The result is that the dialogues are severely changed or replaced by the scriptwriter's own banal lines. In either case they have lost all the charm, sparkle and brilliance of the dialogues in the novel. Poor misguided scriptwriter Richard Hawley even deemed it necessary to make Rochester introduce one of his most famous lines - the line about the string that inextricably binds Jane and him together - with the words: "I know it may sound silly but...." No, Mr. Hawley, if somebody sounds silly here, it is definitely NOT Charlotte Brontë! Another capital error of judgement - and unfortunately also an insult to good taste - is the way they rewrote the farewell scene between Jane and Rochester after the aborted wedding, a scene, by the by, which in all the modern adaptations has received a particularly brutal treatment. Whereas in the latest Jane Eyre production of 2006 that scene was an outrage to Charlotte Brontë's Jane, the way the scene is handled in this adaptation is an outrage to Charlotte Brontë's Rochester. What? Rochester insulting Jane when she intends to leave him, bullying her, throwing her suitcase over the banister and telling her to go if she does not love him enough to stay? Absolutely ridiculous! It is hard to imagine what has gotten into the filmmakers to produce such rubbish as this.This is the worst, but there are many others scenes which are similarly absurd and ludicrous: the first scene of Rochester galloping in slow motion through the mist before he falls into a brook, Grace Poole coming out of the lunatic's room to sniff at Mason's wounds like a wild beast, Rochester sitting on the top of an archway of Thornfield as if he were the court jester and Mason jumping on horseback over the church fence to prevent a marriage of which he has heard only heavens knows how.Equally lamentable is the filmmakers' inability to represent the correct social behaviour of the 1850ies. Rochester and Jane are far too disrespectful to each other at first and later far too hot. Sentences like "I feel that your passions are aroused" are appropriate for "Sex in the City", but not for a costume drama, let alone Jane Eyre. Obviously the filmmakers decided not to bother at all - neither about being true to the novel, nor about portraying the novel's era accurately. The result is a sad failure - both as a film and an adaptation of Jane Eyre. The only fact with which the makers of this Jane Eyre can console themselves is that the BBC failed even worse in the subsequent production of Jane Eyre in 2006.