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Jane Eyre - (1970)
You can somewhat reverse-engineer all of these
Jane Eyre adaptations and kind of know exactly how Charlotte Brontë's book goes, but that doesn't make me any less curious to read it. In this version (which has been cheaply transferred to digital medium for the version I saw - thus looking awful) we forego anything at all to do with Gateshead Hall, Sarah Reed, the Reed children or Jane's rich uncle - thus excising a major portion of the story. We simply begin at Lowood, and when our character moves to Thornfield she never gets called back to a dying Sarah - still clinging desperately to her hatred of Jane. At first I really wasn't convinced of having George C. Scott playing the part of Edward Rochester - but that man's acting skill overwhelmed any reluctance to engage with his unsightly visage (he made this during his great
Patton era.) He uses the craft to give himself much dignity (and later vulnerability) while Susannah York wrestles with the momentous task of playing Jane. The performances elevate the talented Jack Pulman's adaptation, and while it's not the best
Jane Eyre I've ever seen it works well enough. For those wondering which version I recommend - the 1996 theatrical version and 2006 TV miniseries ones are really good, but there's nothing like steeping yourself in all the versions for comparison's sake.
This was my 5th - I've seen the 1943, 1970, 1996, 2006 and 2011 versions. Since 1910, when the first version was made, we've never gone more than 13 years without an adaptation. Currently we're at 12 years since the last one.
6/10
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Evan Almighty - (2007)
I don't know if Steve Oedekerk or Tom Shadyac are really religious people, but I can tell you without any doubt in my mind that they made a big mistake making
Evan Almighty, a $175 million comedy that thinks it's hilarious but in all actuality is one of the unfunniest romps I've seen on such a scale. It's predecessor,
Bruce Almighty cost $81 million to make and raked in $484.6 million - so I can understand the thinking as far as the producers are concerned.
Evan plops us off in the logic-free fairy land of fundamentalist Bible fantasy and is so freeform that nothing in it makes a lick of sense. In it we have a God (played by Morgan Freeman) who shrugged his shoulders when the Holocaust was going on, but is mightily offended by a land seizure bill being passed in the U.S. Congress. So he decides to enact his second flood - to stop that bit of legislation. In the meantime animals come from all over the world, but since the only area flooded is the immediate local surrounds, they may as well have not bothered with that journey. If this had of been remotely funny, I'd have forgiven the silly story, and if the story had of made sense I might have forgiven the embarrassingly awkward deluge of "dad jokes" but mix both together and you get one of the worst mainstream films ever made. Adding insult to injury, it uses bizarrely substandard home-computer level CGI, despite costing nearly $200 million to make. Those effects are awful, and just rub salt in. Astonishing all-round in this day and age.
2/10