Based on the classic Charles Dickens book of the same name and starring a very young looking Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, this Alfonso Cuaron directed film - while pretty to look at - is not even a third as good as David Lean's 1948 classic. Leave it to the Americans to take something classic and mess it all up. The story has been transplanted to New York City, hence the arrival of Robert De Niro, playing the part of Magwitch. While the film stays true to the original story at the outset, using a backwater Sarasota as Finn Bell's (aka Pip's) home and Ca d'Zan as Ms Dinsmoor's (played by the always wonderful Anne Bancroft) Havisham-esque mansion, things go astray when young Bell heads to New York City to find Estella and make it famous as an artist. The innate problem with this film is the edge needed to make the plot truly meaningful. Bell is not near enough kindhearted or poor to make his transformation mean something while Estella is not near cruel enough to make her key purpose, that of heartbreaker, plausible. What's left is a shadow of the real version, perhaps better called Middling Expectations.
My rating 5 out of 10.
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