On Becoming Jane

I joined some girlfriends the other night to see Becoming Jane. I actually really enjoyed it, nevertheless, I have a few criticisms as always.

1) Why does the love interest, Mr. Tom Lefoy, have to be introduced as a little bit of a scoundrel? During our first introduction to him, he is portrayed as a reckless young man who is less than serious about his career, is rather free with women, and enjoys boxing among rowdy crowds. I don't know why the writers felt it necessary to make Tom like this. And I see it more and more often among love interests in romantic movies. If you want to know which guy that our heroine is going to fall in love with just look for the reckless jerk at the beginning of the show and you're bound to have found him. Of course, by the end of the movie, he's had a sudden change of heart and he's instantly everything our heroine could ever want - faithful, kind, accomplished and true.

But why does he have to be "bad" in the first place? Call me crazy, but those aren't the guys I wanted to be with when I was dating. In fact, it was just the opposite. Which is clear by looking at the man I eventually married who is about as clean cut and non-reckless as they come. Why can't Hollywood make a romantic movie where the love interest is always a good guy, because that's really who you want to be with anyway.

2) When Jane first encounters Tom Lefoy, she is giving a reading of some of her writing to a group of friends. Tom is completely bored by her writing and after it is all over, Jane overhears his biting criticism. She is so hurt, she actually runs to her room in tears and burns the manuscript. My question: why is she so affected by his disdain for her writing? She's never met him before. She has no reason to want him to be impressed. Who cares if he doesn't like it? Everyone else was complimentary. There's no reason to have Jane show such weak constitution for criticism, especially from a total stranger. An aspiring author should have thicker skin than that, and I assume that the real Jane did or she would never have published her works in the first place.

3) I realize that they had very little to go off of when it comes to portraying Jane Austen's life. My understanding is that many of her personal letters were destroyed, but that doesn't mean that you have to fill the movie with scenes almost perfectly lifted from Austen's books. I swear the first dancing scene was so close to one of the dancing scenes in Pride and Prejudice, I actually thought one of them would address the other as Mr. Darcy or Miss Elizabeth Bennet. It was a little too surreal.

That's about all of my criticisms. As I mentioned, I really did like the movie. I didn't even mind that clearly the writers took a lot of liberties when it came to portraying Austen's life. In fact, I think as long as you went into it knowing that it isn't very historically accurate, you would really enjoy it. So thanks for the girls night out. It was great!