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Annoying Casting Alert: Juno to play Jane Eyre
May 8, 2008
Variety reported yesterday that Ellen Page, the star of the box-office hit Juno, is set to play the title character in a BBC Films adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's immortal classic Jane Eyre. This is a terrible idea. Unlike the rest of America, I despised, loathed, and H-A-T-E-D Juno and Page's performance as the world's most annoying pregnant teenager. Why? Because its portrait of teenage life, written by a 30-something former stripper, is so fake, fake, fake, and its smug, knowing air of smart cool hipness is grating. Each shot screams: look at me, I am an indie film:; my characters are so colorfully quirky. I'm funny and witty but I also offer deep life lessons. And I am not alone in my hatred of Juno's pretentiousness. Check out Max A. Bentovim's rant "I Hate Juno Hear Me Roar" in the Dartmouth Free Press and Mad TV's scathing parody, Juno II, in which Juno shoots a homeless man and spouts pop-cultured inanities.
And do we need yet another film about the beloved 19th-century governess when the BBC last year did the Emmy Award-winning miniseries staring Toby Stephens (Maggie Smith's son) and Ruth Wilson. Things don't look too promising for this new production as the producer is Allison Owen of Ruby Films, who produced the much-panned The Other Boleyn Girl. I would advise Ellen Page to leave the hamburger phone at home and consider other literary characters to play. How about literature's most famous unwed mother, Hester Prynne? At least, Page couldn't be any worse than Demi Moore's stilted interpretation in the 1995 film of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.
Posted by Wilda Williams on May 8, 2008 | Comments (3)
