"BECOMING JANE" (2007) .....B- ... I wish that I were a greater fan of this movie with its fine performance by Anne Hathaway in her portrayal of the beloved author, Jane Austen. I do believe that the casting of Anne Hathaway is an inspired choice. Some have complained that she is too pretty for the role, but my answer would be that Jane Austen is already a beautiful woman in my book, so go for it. It is hard to showcase inner beauty in a two hour movie, so why not start off on the right foot by intimating inner beauty with a display of outer beauty? After all, our beauty-obsessed culture makes this shallow connection all of the time.

I have never made it official, but I suppose that I could be considered to be a confirmed "Janeite." I have read all of Austen's books at least once and her masterpiece, "Pride and Prejudice," several times. I consider that extraordinarily well written book to be one of the canons of the literature of our Western Civilization. It both satirizes and admires the life that Austen grew into at the end of the Eighteenth Century and the beginning of the Nineteenth.

The mere fact that Austen's books are so popular today gives further proof as to the timelessness of her prescient observations about life, love, and the foibles of mankind. I ask you to show me any other author of that era who is more relevant today than Austen. The fact that she never received a formal education and that she started all of her books while still a young woman in her teens and early twenties only further evidences her creative genius.

Although a huge fan of Jane Austen, I am not one who approached the making of a fictional movie about her life with fear and trepidation as if it were some sort of blasphemous act which might violate her sanctity. My idea would always be that anything which might encourage people, especially younger people, to read more is a good thing. And to get them to read anything by Jane Austen is yet a better thing.

The little that is known about Jane Austen comes from what is left of her letters to her sisters and friends. Naturally, any movie about Austen is going to take liberties with the truth or at least expand the truth into areas which are far more fantasy and conjecture. This has to be expected in anything that comes out of Hollywood.

I would have no objection to this as long as a movie stays within the bounds of what might be inferred from knowing what we do know about the character of the person. And if we know nothing else about Jane Austen, we know that she is a sensible person, that she is the "sensibility" and not the "sense" of her novel, "Sense and Sensibility." All of her novels have as their heroine a young woman who is acutely grounded in the reality of her day.

I started out as a fan of this movie and remained so for about two-thirds of the way through it until the plot collapsed into a Gothic silliness that is much more Lydia Bennett than Elizabeth Bennett. Furthermore, it is my humble opinion that a better story could have been woven out of the small cloth of what is known about her life without resorting to having Austen become a wholesale reflection of her novels, primarily "Pride and Prejudice," "Persuasion," and "Sense and Sensibility." Such a scenario belittles her creative talent.

Finally, the later twists and turns of this movie extend its running time to a generous two hours, and by then it has committed the unpardonable sin of not only being silly, but in the process becoming rather a bore.

The strengths of this movie include its excellent casting, including Julie Walters and James Cromwell as Jane's parents and the inestimable Maggie Smith as the snooty Lady Gresham. There are some who consider James McAvoy to be perfect as Tom Lefroy, the Irishman who captured Jane's attentions while she was a young girl. My opinion of him is somewhat more mixed for his role, but he deserves a pass, I guess.

How deep the affection between Jane and Tom is unknown, but the historical record does show that years later Jane Austen received a marriage proposal from a man of wealth. She accepted his proposal but then reversed her decision the next day. The two men were not competing for Jane at the same time, if there was, in fact, any "competition" at all provided by Tom Lefroy.

This film does promote that idea, with Lefroy's romantic competition coming from the shy and boring Mr. Wisley, a wealthy man played by Laurence Fox. At least Wisley is a man who is honorable and even somewhat sympathetic as someone who could have turned out to be a fine husband if he could ever have grown out of the shadow of his overbearing aunt, Lady Gresham. 120 minutes and rated PG for brief nudity and mild language.