The Jane Austen Book Club

Five women (Kathy Baker, Maria Bello, Amy Breneman, Maggie Grace, Emily Blunt) and one token male (Hugh Dancy) form a club to discuss the six novels of Jane Austen, and writer-director Robin Swicord’s film (from the novel by Karen Joy Fowler) follows the changes in their lives during the half-year of their monthly meetings. The usually reliable Swicord (directing her first feature after doing such fine scripts as Memoirs of a Geisha, Little Women and Matilda) miscalculates, trimming 10 to 20 years off everyone’s age and jettisoning the flashbacks with which Fowler’s gentle, sweetly perceptive novel explored the characters’ past as well as their present. The result is a Hollywood-glossy, featherbrained chick flick, entertaining enough if you haven’t read the book, but a mighty disappointment if you have.