Emma. (2020) * *

Directed by:  Autumn de Wilde

Starring:  Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Bill Nighy, Mia Goth, Josh O'Connor, Callum Turner, Rupert Graves, Miranda Hart

When did the romance and passion leave Jane Austen's novel which was last adapted for the big screen in 1996 with Gwyneth Paltrow adorning the lead role?    Or even the good cheer of Clueless (1995), which was in itself a retelling of the tale in contemporary Beverly Hills?    This lifeless 2020 version doesn't add anything new, but the delight has been removed.    Anya Taylor-Joy does what she can, but her Emma isn't the Paltrow Emma, or even the Alicia Silverstone one.  

Emma Woodhouse is a twenty-one year old woman with means who spends her days matchmaking and doing quite well at it.    There isn't much else to do in the English countryside except visit friends, gossip, and sip tea.    The mansions are lovely and the wardrobes, impeccable, as you would expect from any adaptation of an Austen novel set in its normal era.    This is a movie in which names are bandied about as if we were somehow familiar with them.    It takes time to keep them all straight.  Perhaps a small card listing who's who when you enter the theater will help.

Try and keep this all straight, because it will be on the final exam:  Emma is trying to set up her plain orphaned friend Harriet (Goth) with Mr. Elton (O'Connor), the local vicar, even though Harriet is really in love with a local widowed farmer who proposes to her.    Emma slyly convinces Harriet to reject the farmer, but Mr. Elton is actually in love with Emma and thinks nothing of Harriet.    Meanwhile, Emma favors Frank Churchill (Turner), who seems to like Emma well enough, but maddeningly doesn't propose.   Emma's frenemy is Mr. Knightley (Flynn), who scolds Emma for being in love with a wanker like Churchill and for being cruel to her local poor friend Mrs. Bates (Hart), whose daughter Jane Fairfax plays a major role in all of this in secret.

I won't reveal who winds up with whom and I don't want to spoil the fun, but Emma. isn't much fun.  It is a passionless romantic comedy which even manages to fumble the finale in which Emma discovers who she truly loves.   In the 1996 version, there is a critical scene in which Emma is inconsolable because she believes the man she loves will marry someone else.    She laments her ways and vows to change if God answers her prayer that her love not marry another.    The payoff to this is immensely satisfying.   This version inexplicably leaves this out, and the ending in which Emma and her suitor declare their love for each other is stilted and awkward.    Maybe the 2020 adaptation of Emma was made for those who didn't remember this story was already made before, and much better.