Imagine you finish watching The Greatest Showman and immediately watch it all again. The sets are beautiful and the movie inspires you to believe in the American Dream again. Looking for someone who shares your joy, you google movie reviews. Up comes the NYT website and some reviewer has written, “I expected a movie about the circus to have clowns, but director Michael Gracey disappoints.” You would be upset and feel the need to set the internet record straight.
Today I write to defend female filmmaker Jerusha Hess and her delightful directorial debut Austenland (2013). I will not link to or quote the nasty NYT review.
Jerusha Hess is the brilliant writer of Napoleon Dynamite (2004). I loved Napoleon Dynamite so much that I used my screen printing assignment in high school art class to create custom shirts with references to the movie. If you don’t get Napoleon Dynamite, you really don’t get it. It is funny, and every visual feature is intentional.
Austenland is also funny. There are slapstick moments that made me laugh. I also enjoyed little details such as the recurring motif of characters holding fake animals. Ironically, one of the only real animals is a newborn horse foal, who ultimately turns out to be part of a lie. The fake things are real and the real things turn out to be fake. This film is meta. It has layers, like Shrek. It is only inside of the theatrical play within the theme park that the leading man expresses his true feelings.
On the surface, this film is a guilty pleasure romantic comedy. It does deliver on fantasy wish fulfillment, which I think it should. Impressively, it delivers on wish fulfillment while simultaneously delivering interesting commentary on fantasy versus reality.
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