I Capture the Castle
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Movie Reviews of I Capture the Castle
Movie Review: Annoying faux art film
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a predictable period piece romance/drama - don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The breathless, repetitive and "affected" narration by the Cassandra character is gauranteed to annoy.On the positive side the female lead is pleasant to look at and Bill Nighy is convincing in his role as a frustrated writer and father.
Movie Review: Biggest problem-It's rated R
Summary: 2 Stars
Acting, casting, all very minimal. Not a happy ending and I ended up throwing away the DVD. I wonder if the book is any better???Movie Review: I suffer the boredom
Summary: 1 Stars
I Capture the Castle (Tim Fywell, 2003)
I Capture the Castle was adapted from what may be the most awkwardly-titled young adult novel of all time, and TV director Tim Fywell's lack of insistence that the godawful title be changed should tip you off that awkwardness comprises a good deal of what you're in for with this exceptionally odd adaptation. First off, why shut out most of your built-in audience by making an R-rated adaptation of a young adult book? Why make it worse with some of the strangest casting decisions in modern filmdom? Why not at least try to whip it into some sort of shape that readers of the book might recognize? Well, to be fair, it's quite possible they did that; that may, in fact, be the source of all the awkwardness. Let the viewer decide.
Cassandra Mortmain (Atonement bombshell Romola Garai) and her odd family-- older sister Rose (28 Weeks Later's Rose Byrne), father James (Pirates of the Caribbean's Bill Nighy), and stepmother Topaz (Brassed Off's Tara Fitzgerald)-- move to a crumbling castle in the country so James, a previously successful writer with a decade-long case of writer's block, can finally start working again. The problem is, it doesn't work, and a couple of years down the road, the family are penniless. Enter the Cotton family, who own the land on which the castle stands. The two brothers, Neil (They's Marc Blukas) and Simon (Deadbirds' Henry Thomas), capture Rose's eye, and she sets her heart on marrying one of them to pull her family out of poverty. Thus begins a melodrama of manners.
And melodrama it is; nary a chance to overnarrate, overact, overdecorate, or overdirect is passed up. Even at less than two hours and being based on a novel, the film is brutally slow-paced. One wonders what swathes of prose got cut to make this screenplay fit to time, and whether all the book's actual action, plot furtherance, and character development was contained in it. (That's actually not a bad guess, as much of what goes wrong with novel adaptations usually has to do with one or more of those three aspects getting cut; it's a rare thing all three fall by the wayside, however.) The sole bright light in all this is Romola Garai's performance. For all I know, she's overacting in every scene, but relative to what's around her, it at least seems understated and heartfelt. Other than that, though, and Tara Fitzgerald's character's propensity to go dancing naked in the dark, I couldn't find a single reason to keep watching this film, save to spare those of you who've never seen it before the same boredom I suffered. *
Movie Review: Book was wonderful - movie was not
Summary: 1 Stars
It generally goes without saying that a film adaptation is never going to be as good as the novel on which it is based, but I can't think of another novel-into-film that missed the mark so completely as this one. The book is insightful and touching but also very funny, with some really wonderful, original language. It's clever and poignant and has one of the most delightful narrators out there.
The movie, on the other hand, gets so bogged down with sentimentality that it just drags along, devoid of energy. There are some beautiful locations and the cast looks okay and seems capable enough, but the film has been directed as a heavy drama with deep dark pain at its core-- instead of a romantic coming-of-age story that mixes comedy, drama and quirky charm in equal measure. Everyone in the movie just seems so miserable, even in scenes where they're supposed to be happy.
The voice-over narration is one of the biggest problems. In the book the story is told through the journal entries of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, a very bright aspiring writer, and her voice has an intensity, precociousness and excitement that just hurls the reader blissfully along; but in the movie Cassandra's voice-over narration lacks every single one of these qualities and instead has a solemn, mournful tone. This is probably more the director's fault than the actress's, although some blame should also go to the screenwriter, who has the unfortunate habit of substituting her own annoyingly mediocre narration and dialogue in place of the often brilliant language that's readily available in Dodie Smith's novel. The screenwriter also seems to have felt the need to invent more than one scene completely out of nowhere; one huge scene in particular between Cassandra and her father is not only NOT in the book, but it contradicts everything the book stands for-- and in such a maudlin, obvious, after-school-special type of way. Sadly, they really blew it with this interpretation of a thoroughly enjoyable book.
Movie Review: Terrible Screenwriter
Summary: 1 Stars
It was clear from the commentary that the screenwriter did not understand or appreciate much of the book she was adapting. Almost any adaptation has to change or leave out parts of a book, but this screenwriter added unnecessary melodrama and destroyed the humor of the original. She also claimed scenes were true to the book when they weren't and made changes that didn't make sense. The worst was that she made a big deal about not changing the ending, saying that Dodie Smith (the author) had been offered half a million dollars by book-of-the-month club to change it and she (the screenwriter) felt that if Smith resisted that much money it was important the ending stay the same. And she changed it! She changed it in a different way but the change was just as bad, arguably worse.
She also changed some scenes in a way that made them not only contrary to fiction, but also to the real era in which the events of the movie are supposed to take place. Many movies do this, but I wish they wouldn't.
On the plus side, the scenery was beautiful (though wrong for the supposed setting) and the acting was good for the most part. It was too bad that the story was changed enough that Neil and Simon behaved bizarrely and inexplicably. Neil especially was a strange caricature of an American, but given what he had to work with, I don't suppose it was the actor's fault.
I'm sure I would have liked this movie slightly more if I had not read the book, but I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The screenwriter's plot just doesn't make sense. Maybe no screenplay could have adequately conveyed the character's motivations and the plot only makes sense in book form, but this attempt is truly terrible.