Editorial Review:

Description:
This delightfully fun and lighthearted comedy is based on the story that inspired the hit movie CLUELESS! Dazzling Gwyneth Paltrow (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS) shines as EMMA, a mischievous young beauty who sets up her single friends. Funny thing is ... she's not very good at it! So when Emma tries to find a man for Harriet (Toni Collette -- THE SIXTH SENSE, ABOUT A BOY), she makes a hilariously tangled mess of everyone's lives. You'll enjoy all the comic confusion ... until Emma herself falls in love, finally freeing everyone from her outrageously misguided attempts at matchmaking.

Amazon.com:
Most people didn't mind Gwyneth Paltrow's English accent in this charming, 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's novel (which also inspired Clueless). But even if it doesn't sound quite right to you, there are plenty of authentic and wonderful Brit thespians in this film by screenwriter-turned-director Douglas McGrath (co-author of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway), including Juliet Stevenson (Truly Madly Deeply), Alan Cumming (Buddy), Phyllida Law (Much Ado About Nothing), Ewan McGregor (the Scots star of Trainspotting), and Sophie Thompson, outstanding and finally heartbreaking as the chattering Miss Bates. Paltrow plays Austen's benign busybody, Emma Woodhouse--so busy trying to arrange the lives of others that she is sidestepping her own. McGrath brings a kind of pretty and light touch to the production, his best move the wise delegation of creative authority to the actors themselves. --Tom Keogh

A timeless classic....Gwynetha Paltrow is excellent and as an added treat Jeremy Northam is in it...Highly recommend it as a member of any Jane Austin collection.

Average Rating:

Rating: - Great Film with an added treat
A timeless classic....Gwynetha Paltrow is excellent and as an added treat Jeremy Northam is in it...Highly recommend it as a member of any Jane Austin collection.

Rating: - DVD doesn't boot reliably
The DVD is in extremely good condition and plays very well. The difficulty is getting the thing going in the first place -- more often than one would expect.

How do I know that it's this DVD? It's the only one that gives me this problem.

Delightful movie.

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Rating: - Trying to direct Cupid's arrows may result in getting shot yourself
Emma Woodhouse is well-intentioned, but her efforts at playing Cupid are comedic, if not totally misdirected. This wealthy young woman is determined to live alone with her elderly father. Along with painting, Emma is working assiduously to find husbands for her friends. She good-naturedly gossips and interferes and ends up making matters worse.

While no film could be as well-done as Miss Austen's novels, I cannot compare this version to my favorite versions of "Pride and Prejudice" (BBC) and "Sense and Sensibility." While I enjoy Ms. Paltrow's performances in most films, I felt she played the role as more of a contemporary woman rather than one of 19th Century Britain.

Rebecca Kyle, October 2009

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Rating: - Emma
I loved this movie It is beautifully filmed, the costumes and scenery are lovely to look at and make it believable coming from it's time period. I am a huge Jane Austen fan and am trying to watch every version of all of her books. This is the only version of Emma that I've seen so far. The movie is very funny and generally quite light as opposed to Sense and Sensibility or Mansfield Park - however that doesn't take away from the character development or the teaching of good morals and the satisfaction of a beautiful ending to the story which only occurs after Emma has learned the lessons she desperately needs to learn. I loved the humor - it is a wonderful "girl" movie with laughs and tears and of course beautiful language with nothing objectionable...It is the kind of movie that gives you the escape that you need into a world that is believable on some level but not real enough to be depressing. My only objection is that the DVD has no bonus materials - I would've loved to hear director and actor comments during the film as is often done and or a section on how the movie was made. After seeing several of these in other movies - it brings the movie alive in another way. Well worth watching.

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Rating: - Great movie - terrible DVD
This DVD was fixed formated for 4/3 televisions in letterbox. That means if you view it on a 16/9 tv there are black bars on both sides as well as the top and bottom of the screen. You have to watch it with the tv set for 4/3. Viewing it at 16/9 stretches the image so the actors looks like they weight 400 pounds. When viewed in 4/3, you can't zoom the image to eliminate the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen because if you do so much of the image is lost off both sides that it's impossible to watch. Viewed on a 16/9 tv set to the required 4/3 format, the picture only fills the center 40-percent of the screen, which is too small to enjoy even on my 52-inch Samsung. As if all this wasn't bad enough, the quality of the transfer is very poor. The image is so soft that you keep squinting at it in an attempt to sharpen it up.

"Emma" was a highly regarded movie when released. I can't understand why the studio would distribute such a poor version of it. It would have cost no more to released it as an anamorphic DVD, such as waas done for "Sense and Sensability", which produces near blu-ray quality images.

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Related Items:

Sense & Sensibility (Special Edition)

Mansfield Park (1999)

Persuasion

Pride & Prejudice

Emma (A&E, 1997)