EMMA (44)

Directed by: Douglas McGrath

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Toni Collette, Alan Cumming

The Pitch: In 19th-century England, a matchmaking young busybody - a girl who has everything except humility - painfully graduates to emotional wisdom.

Theo Sez: Right from its opening credits - a spinning globe on which we gradually approach the tiny English village where the action is set - this version of Jane Austen's greatest novel seems fascinated by the dinkiness of her world (a remnant, perhaps, of Texas-born McGrath's background in wide-open spaces). It OD's on detail, finding it all - the apple arbours, the country picnics, the games of archery, the complicated dances - adorably quaint, like a starry-eyed tourist ; with its emphasis on good manners and its straight-faced approval of Emma's "noblesse oblige" (the scene where she visits a poor family is just begging to be satirised - but isn't), it seems to think of Austen's world as a small Utopia, a place of decent old-fashioned "values". The result is a bright, pleasant frolic without the edge that gave SENSE AND SENSIBILITY its emotional force : social codes and conventions are supportive rather than stifling, regulation of society a good thing, and a perfectly happy ending is always a shoo-in. Once you accept its undiscriminating benevolence it's actually a very deft movie, though often excessively broad - reducing many of the minor characters to a comic catchphrase, and fond of mouldy old gags like Emma pretending to be uninterested in the day's mail then, when her father has gone, rifling through it voraciously. Its pleasures lie mostly in the performances, especially the swanlike Paltrow - who, if not particularly sharp, is at least utterly charming.