Not only am I a gamer, but I’m also an avid movie watcher and TV show watcher. Since I’m not too sure I can keep up with TV, believe me I would love to do Game of Thrones reviews along with a couple of other shows, I figured I can at least start with movies and see how that goes. Unlike my game reviews, I really don’t have a particular format that I’m going to follow for these reviews and I’ll basically be winging it as I go. So, here’s my very first movie review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
I’ll start off by saying that I’m not a Jane Austen fan. I know, gasp, how can I not be a Jane Austen fan? Being a girl and all it seems required and people always seemed shocked when I tell them. I’ve tried though, I really have. On more than one occasion I’ve actually tried reading Pride and Prejudice, but I just couldn’t. A couple of chapters in and I was yawning and just ready to go to sleep. It was ok though, that’s what movies are for right? Wrong. I don’t know how many adaptation’s I’ve seen of Pride and Prejudice and I’ve also found them a complete snooze fest. To me they were just boring and overly complicated, filled with drama, but not in a good way. So what made me want to watch Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? The zombie aspect of course. I’m a huge fan of The Walking Dead, so I figured what the hell. If anything could make me more interested in Pride and Prejudice it had to be zombies.
Based off the 2009 novel, which I never read, it’s still basically the same Pride and Prejudice that everyone knows. Lizzie meets Mr. Darcy and despises him, maybe she starts to like him a little and enjoy his company, then she goes back to hating him even more, before realizing that she’s in love with him and wants to be with him. To try and make this a little less boring, zombies are thrown into the mix and Bennet girls are now trained zombie killers. Their father had them trained in China, not Japan, which is basically a big deal in the movie since they’re looked down upon during one point in the movie because of this. While this is basically an episode of the walking dead based in 1813, there’s a twist.
Wickham, Darcy’s arch nemesis, is trying to help convince people along with Lizzie, that zombies aren’t so bad. The ones that haven’t eaten human brains and have lived strictly off of a pig brain diet that they consume as a sacramental wine of sorts at church can actually be functioning members of society and there’s no reason to go to war with them. These zombies act like every day 1813 people, except half of their faces are falling off and they’re decaying because spoiler alert, they’re undead.
While there aren’t all that may zombie fighting moments in the movie, the ones that did take place, I would rate them sub-par. Sure, they were choreographed to look good, but it made it look like some sort of colossal joke. Of course, there’s infighting among the living as well that included a boring scene of Lizzie fighting Mr. Darcy that lasted way too long and involved them cutting each other’s clothes open just a bit to reveal some more cleavage on Lizzie’s part but still keep that PG-13 rating. The final scene that was the nail on the coffin was the fighting scene between Wickham and Darcy. It reminded me too much of the scene between Rick and Shane on The Walking Dead and at this point I was just waiting for the movie to be over.
Usually a bad movie could be somewhat rectified by really good acting, but this was also not the case for this movie. I have no idea who played the main characters and the only two people I was able to spot out was Charles Dance, who played Mr. Bennett, and Lean Headey, who played Lady Catherine. The Bennet girls were played actresses who I guess were fitting for he part and Mr. Darcy was played by some guy who looked like a cleaned up Daryl from The Walking Dead. Throughout the movie I found the acting as a whole to be just as boring as the plot. As much as it pains me to say this, because I’m a huge Lena Headey fan and I have been before Game of Thrones, but Lena Headey’s depiction of Lady Catherine felt like Cersei with an eye-patch. I really hate the fact that this happens not only in this movie, but in a lot of other movies / TV shows where an actor or actress has played a role for so long that every other role just feels like a depiction of the character played on whatever TV show they were on.
Overall I give this movie 1 star out of 5.
I found this movie to be a complete waste of almost two hours. Two hours that I could have spent playing video games, two hours that I could have spent doing anything else but watching this movie. I will say that this is the very last time that I ever watch another rendition of Pride and Prejudice because I think I’ve seen it enough times and enough different ways to know that it’s just not for me. The zombie aspect didn’t really add anything to this movie and didn’t make it as exciting that I thought it would. It was still really the same old Pride and Prejudice. If you’re a fan of Pride and Prejudice and you like zombies, I would say that you’ll probably like this movie. If you’re looking for a different take on a zombie movie, then look elsewhere because you won’t find what you’re looking for here.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 