Not A Fan Of The Latest Emma Adaptation

Note: This post contains spoilers for the film.

I went to watch Emma with the highest of expectations, only to come home from the theater sorely disappointed.

I admit I never fully watched the trailer - I saw a bit, it looked decent, and I cut it short so I wouldn't spoil myself for the experience - but even so, my expectations were moderately high. The style of the film looked interesting, it was directed by a woman, and it claimed to be a "romantic comedy" — not a term I'd typically associate with the story, although thanks to the whimsical, matchmaking main character, there is already a lot of comedy inherent in Austen's original novel. But I took the film at its word and went in expecting an original adaptation that brings something new to the beloved story of Emma. Except it didn't do this at all, and in fact, I yawned through the whole thing.

One of my biggest complaints is that the film wasn't all that funny. You'd expect some laughs brought about by some new, contemporary insight or commentary on the novel, but instead this film keeps everything the same and only occasionally exaggerates scenes in such a way as to bring out "comedy". The older 2009 BBC adaptation of Emma features the character of Elton cooing excessively over a painting done by Emma of her friend Harriet, all in an attempt to win her favor, although Emma herself doesn't realize this until much later. This new adaption keeps this scene exactly the same, while additionally placing this painting in an obscenely ornate frame that resembles a cuckoo clock more than anything else. This conjures a few snickers from the audience, but that's about it. Similarly, when Knightley finally musters the courage to speak to Emma about his feelings and Emma finally musters the courage to listen, her nose randomly starts bleeding as they're speaking under a tree. This scene probably got the most laughs out of the audience, but I sat there wondering why this nosebleed - more applicable in a Korean drama, in my opinion - was supposed to make me laud the film when there was nevertheless nothing meaningful in that red stripe of blood running down Emma's face and into her mouth. It was an odd and unexpected choice on the director's part, and appreciable in that sense, but it didn't add to the feeling of that well-known scene in any way; in fact, the nosebleed did its best to express emotions that Emma herself simply didn't invoke.

My other main gripe with this latest adaptation is that for a film that was expected to be unique in its depiction of Emma's story, an unfortunate amount of scenes were strikingly similar to those in older adaptations. I rewatched the 2009 mini-series shortly after this film just to make sure it wasn't just my imagination, and indeed it appears that the 2009 adaptation is almost taken as canon. The painting scenes look very similar, as did the picnic scene toward the end — Frank Churchill even slouched on the picnic blanket in a way reminiscent of the older adaptation.

When all is said and done, however, the 2009 adaptation just has so much more heart than the 2020 one ever will. Granted, it has the benefit of having double the runtime, so there's more time to build out relationships and the like (although in my opinion, a more concise film should at least have the benefit of not boring its audiences to sleep). Even so, while this latest adaptation attempts to push the comedy angle and fails even in that - though I will say that Miranda Hart as Miss Bates and Bill Nighy playing Emma's father were the saving graces of this film - the four 2009 episodes actually get you invested in the characters, maintain clear chemistry between the leads (which this film certainly doesn't do), and live up to the original book in a way that is certain to have all Austen fans daydreaming about Mr. Knightley during their A.P. Biology exam (aka me a little less than seven years ago).

Having seen the 1996 and 2009 adaptations before this one, as well as Clueless, I can say with certainty that this is my least favorite out of them all.