Becoming Jane Opens to Lukewarm Reviews

The latest attempt to cash in on the Austen-mania that has had the world in its grip since the mid-90s is "Becoming Jane," a "re-imagining" of the young Jane Austen's life that takes off from some letters of hers, which imply that she might have had an affair with an Irish lawyer. The movie is a standard Hollywood romantic comedy concocted around the conceit that this affair provided Austen (Anne Hathaway, who's a good deal more photogenic than the real Austen) with the burning inspiration she needed to become a great writer. The movie, which opens today, has had a lukewarm reception from critics.

Stephanie Zacharek, of Salon, writes, "The problem with Becoming Jane is that it snaps all too snugly into a modern template of romance, instead of going to the trouble of imagining -- since we've already acknowledged that imagining is what we're doing here -- what romance may have meant to the real Austen...Becoming Jane would have been more honest if it had been called No Sex in the Country."