I Finally Found A Film I Hate! (Part 1) · 11:21pm Mar 5th, 2020
(Note: I'm interested in reviewing films in my spare time and this is going to be a long one. In fact, it might well be Part 1 of something. But it probably won't mean much to anyone not familiar with Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens or its adaptations. In that event, maybe you're just curious about why I'm worked up, maybe you consider it justice for me defending divisive stuff like the Disney remakes or Star Wars Sequel Trilogy or maybe you are genuinely interested in Dickens in which case, hi-five! 
But it's definitely not what you think...)
Hi guys.
As most of you may know, I am phenomenally laid-back when it comes to films that get people venting.
I really love the Hobbit Series and the Witcher Series. I enjoy the Star Wars sequels and Fantastic Beasts. I quite like the Disney Remakes. You get the idea.
There are some things I certainly don't like but I don't really spend much time distressing over it. There are plenty of adaptations of this and that. The more popular a franchise, the more adaptations will get made and they will inevitably vary in quality. I'm okay with that.
But then I found something that...really ground my gears the more I think about it.
And I feel as though it's time to show people I can get angry with the rest of them. Although, unlike most, I ignore the mainstream and go for the obscure.
You may not know this but I'm quite a big fan of Charles Dickens. I think he was a great writer working at one of the most difficult times in history and the lessons he teaches still hold up very dearly today.
And as such, I...what?
No, no, no, I'm not talking about The Personal History of David Copperfield starring Dev Patel that's come out recently. I haven't actually seen that yet but I'm looking forward to getting the chance. It looks great, the scenery and atmosphere look splendid, it's got a lot of my favourite actors and an excellent director (The Death of Stalin man) and it's one of the few films I really want to see in cinema.
What about the colourblind casting?
...
What about the colourblind casting?! That's what I say!
No, no, as I said, it's obscure...a TV film made in 2001.
Of Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby...
And dear lord, it peeved me to no end!
I've mentioned before that the 2002 adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby is my all-time favourite standalone film (The LotR trilogy is my favourite film series)
So soon afterwards, I found other adaptations of Nicholas Nickleby and I found this one and it looked like it was certain to impress.
I found it on Youtube. I don't know if it's still there but feel free to check it out.
It seemed to be a much fuller and truer adaptation with a lot of the book's original characters (A problem with the 2002 film is that they cut it down for time and combined some characters into the same story. Nicholas's sister Kate's story was rather bare-bones which is a shame) such as the Mantalini family, Arthur Gride, Tilda Price, Peg Sliderskew, Mr Snawley, Miss Knag and others.
It's casting was amazing. It had James D'Arcy (Jarvis from Agent Carter and Colonel Winnant from Dunkirk) as the titular character along with Lee Ingleby as Smike, Pam Ferris (The original Mrs Trunchbull from Matilda) as Mrs Squeers, Tom Hollander as Mr Mantalini, Donald Sumpter as Mr Brooker, Tom Ellis as John Browdie, Liz Smith as Peg Sliderskew, Dominic West as Sir Mulberry Hawk and CHARLES FRIGGIN' DANCE as Ralph Nickleby!
If ever there was a man to rival 2002's Christopher Plummer for that role it was him!
Tywin Lannister as the evil uncle that paints a perfect picture of Scrooge if he'd never changed!
How on earth did they mess this up?!
Well, it became quite obvious that the writers and directors (Who shall go unnamed) didn't really get Dickens.
Maybe I can't be too harsh because this was before the 2002 version that I love so much but they both came from the same book and I would have thought that if they were focussing much more on all the characters and twists and turns, you'd do better to keep the general atmosphere but apparently not. The 2002 version cuts down more to build the scene and characters left over, sure, but they do it effectively.
This though? Let's talk about this...
Watching the film I felt like I was in a boat on stormy sea because there's no other way to describe the tone but terribly and awfully jolty.
One moment, the scene is solemn and gloomy and typically Victorian but the acting is also quite phoned in and you get the impression this was deliberate. Where in the 2002 version, the widowed Mrs Nickleby was a sobbing wreck when she came to her brother-in-law's home; here she's very flat and I suppose is trying to indicate depression but she just looks bored.
James D'Arcy plays a good part but aside from looking like a Death Eater in his very dark garb and pale face, he just doesn't show enough expression.
But it's when the characters show expression that I started to really get tired of it!
The characters in this film have only two moods and neither makes them very interesting or endearing. Half the time they're quiet, slow, stilted and usually just rattling off information and the other half of the time they are...well...to put it bluntly, nervous wrecks!
Whenever something unexpected or unfortunate occurs, it's like they think they're doing Greek Theatre on Heroin! They completely lose their minds at once and wail and scream and bawl and rant like a madhouse and it never seems to cease until the scene changes and we're back to monotone. I feel seasick here! 
I mean, the 2002 version had their moments of tension and high stakes but it was all very appropriate, relatable and well-contained.
Here, if there's no sense of self-control in these characters, all the pathos feels faked.
Character development comes across as though each and every character is holding back a mental breakdown until it all comes out in a torrent and you just want to get out of there.
It's cringeworthy, there's no other way to describe it!
And worse still, again, everything about it indicates that this was deliberate!
The director must think he's making an episode of Miranda or something (And I'm not knocking Miranda, I like Miranda but it's not Dickens!)
Dickens already has a lot of very good humour that any audience can enjoy. The 2002 adaptation is full of it like the use of effete language to make double meanings, the subtle digs characters take at each other and, yes, sometimes characters acted very bizarre but the reason that works there and not here is that if everyone's acting bizarre, it's not funny because the audience has nothing to compare it to in-context.
And there's quite a lot of sexual humour here and it's always played as gross. Mr and Mrs Squeers are constantly fondling and leering at each other and Sir Mulberry Hawk and Sir Arthur Gride's unwanted affections for Kate Nickleby and Madeline Bray are played as almost goofy.
Erm...not sure you got the memo, guys, but Attempted Rape Isn't Funny! It was horrible, scary and damaging long before the MeToo movement made it topical!
I don't know. Maybe it's meant to be those things here but with everyone overreacting, you can't bloody tell!
Lets start with the ones who arguably make the most impact on the audience; The 'orrible Squeers.
Not everyone is aware but the tyrannical headmaster, Wackford Squeers, was actually based off a real-life headmaster that Dickens came across in his research who ran a cheap school in North England where the helplessness of the children and the neglect of their parents allowed him to basically run a slave camp. When Dickens published his books, people were made aware, rules for the running of schools became stricter and men like Squeers weren't welcome in polite society.
Let that sink in. The horrible conditions and the helpless atmosphere Dotheboys School creates?
It was real! For a group of very unfortunate young boys, it was real.
In the 2002 version, Jim Broadbent is quite a hammy actor but he still comes with a very frightening and domineering atmosphere, both thuggish and crafty, providing the only jump-scares in the film that are scarily effective and giving the definite impression that underneath his school, no-one dares speak out against him. And Julia Stevenson as Mrs Squeers is gloriously icy and eerie and really creates a perfect foil for her husband's thunder.
Here, the Squeers spend way more time being gluttonous oafs than actually showing themselves to be sadistic schoolmasters.
To put it into perspective, their actual interactions with the children don't last longer than a minute and it's all pretty-much all lifted from the book. Yet their meal where they plough through their mountain of food like hogs lasts at least three! Or at least that's what it felt like and where most of the effort seemed to go.
Oh, and Nicholas is no help. In the original, he becomes a teacher and the boys soon consider him a welcome change from Squeers and his arbitrary and harsh lessons and soon consider him a guardian angel, the physically and mentally-impaired teenage Smike chiefly among them.
In the 2002 version, Charlie Hunnam (Yes, of Sons of Anarchy fame. Trust me, he makes it work...although he seems to have a problem holding a British accent for some reason) is only seen teaching them once but it's a very convincing scene. He's informative, considerate, fairly laid-back but dignified and you get the impression that he is doing this for their benefit and is open to their wishes or problems. In stark contrast to Squeers who not only taught them incorrect spelling without care but did so in an arbitrary and snappy tone, the words relating to farm and house-work which indicated he was going to put them to it as a 'learning exercise'.
Here though, the writers seem to forget why Nicholas is here in the first place. He's shown making a paper boat, passing it round and asking them what else it could be like a hat or something...
Er...that's great, Nick, but this isn't Dead Poets Society and you're not Robin Williams (God rest his funny old soul) I mean, it's great that you're getting them to think outside the box but it still doesn't change the fact that these boys are starved, slaved, abused, cut off from their parents and living in Yorkshire!
This theme doesn't work and you feel like the writers didn't know how to say 'Here's a Teacher that does things differently' any other way!
Squeers is already a teacher that does things differently, horribly differently. He's the issue here!
But that's not the end of it. Their daughter, Fanny Squeers is a really, really iffy story here.
Fanny in the books is a girl on the estate who fancies Nicholas and believes he must do the same, her friend Tilda too scared of her to disagree. Nicholas is polite with her for the most part but, frustrated at last more with the way her father's behaving than anything else, he tells her he's not interested.
The 2002 film does this very well. It's witty, it's cathartic and it's funny while at the same time clear that it won't end well.
The key here is that you're not on her side. She's the one who jumped the gun, assuming that he was in love with her mostly just because she wanted him to be and she's prepared to take it out on Tilda, Smike, the boys or anyone else in her family's power if he doesn't.
That's not something the version I'm talking about does.
The character of Fanny Squeers in the 2001 version can be summed up in three words.
Ugly. Fat. Stupid.
That is all.
And you see, to a mature audience, that can actually build up her character as quite sympathetic. You get the impression that she really couldn't be anything else. She's never shown directly being part of her parents' cruelties and her friend Tilda comes across as more cold and manipulative toward her rather than the reverse.
There's a scene where she invites Nicholas to tea with her, Tilda and Tilda's fiance John Browdie and, like everything else in the film, it just gets awkward and wears out its welcome. Fanny cries audibly and childishly and acts very immature so you feel more like she's some kind of poor, mentally-impaired womanchild who can't really process what's happening to her and has all her supposed friends laughing at her rather than the stuck-up, self-obsessed, delusional young woman in the book and in, for the most part, in the film.
And oh god, when Nicholas rebuffs her...it's just not done right.
Tilda convinces her to admit to Nicholas that she loves him and Nicholas, gentleman that he is, practically spits out the command for her to never exercise such insulting thoughts again and declares it to be an outrage!
Unbelievable!
Our 'hero' has shown more coldness and spite towards a character than any of the villains in this adaptation ever will.
And keep in mind, two of the villains in the original Nicholas Nickelby are who I based Countess Magnifying Glass and Lord Magistrate Nitpick on! That should tell you how vile the villains in this story are meant to be and how horribly mislaid this comes across in this version.
This is either a catastrophic miss of the original point...or a daring and genius alternate character interpretation...that is never brought up again and never pushed further so the former seems to be the one.
And also, he's never really shown a whole lot of anger towards his situation, maybe due to the jolting tone, so it feels so out-of-nowhere.
And finally, John Browdie himself.
Now, Kevin McKidd is glorious as the 2002's bluff young Yorkshireman who at first is hostile towards Nicholas Nickleby but quickly and loudly warms to him. The scene in the 2002 film where he heartily congratulates Nicholas for thrashing Squeers with his own cane and rescuing Smike is one of my favourite parts of the movie, not just for the catharsis factor but more because it is such an important part of Nicholas's journey finding a fellow with a good-heart after his hellish time spent at Dotheboys and knowing that there's one man who he can count on which he does later.
Here, Tom Ellis as John Browdie (I mentioned Miranda, here's poor Gary!) is one of the most awkward and underutilised parts of this film...which is a bloody achievement!
He has his hostilities with Nickleby, something that isn't in the 2002 version, but it takes part in the most awkward scene, tea with Fanny. It seems to be trying to build the idea that he's actually a villain in with the Squeers family.
But after Nicholas beats Squeers and escapes with Smike, he finds Browdie on the hill and...well...this is how it basically plays out...
Browdie: So...I hear you beat the schoolmaster.
Nickleby: That's right.
Browdie: ...alright then...(End scene)
I mean...wow.
I guess, they were trying to show him choosing to let him go as a big thing but after what we've seen and how awkward the tone gets, it doesn't feel any different to how its always played out. You feel more like Browdie's being a coward than anything else.
And overall, it really misses the point and makes the scene come off as rather boring.
Okay, I think I need to wait until tomorrow for Part 2 and whatever that will entail.
I hope I'm painting a good picture here. If not, here's something all you hipsters will understand...
To put it in a modern perspective...this movie is so awkward, cringeworthy and unaware of what makes Dickens so timeless...that around the half-way mark, I expected James Corden and Rebel Wilson to come on as Albert and Victoria and fart the tune of 'Land of Hope and Glory'.
Thank you and goodnight!
Wow. Just wow. Glad I never watched this movie is all I can say!
Now this here is how you manage to rant about a movie *without* coming off as a total asshole! And for that I congratulate you!
5214892
Thank you.
I don't know how long this may get but I've got a lot of material.
In it I also hope to defend The Personal History of David Copperfield too.
It's getting way too much flack for doing something that is, in my opinion, perfectly justified and that needs to be addressed.
But in any case, tune in tomorrow.
5214892
Also, I hope I've increased your interest in the 2002 version. I'd recommend that to anyone, it's a definite feel-good film.
5214906
I'm willing to give it a whirl sometime in the future. Frankly, all this bullshit over the newer movies coming out have kind of put me in the mood to seek out and review movies from a period prior to the really vitriolic era of film "debate".
5214909
I'd recommend it. Puts some problems into perspective.
For instance, all the people arguing that stuff like Star Wars should be put in the public domain.
They don't want that...
They don't want that at all...
5214914
No shit, *that's* what some people are saying?
My God, what idiots...
I hear ya. Reminds me of a Movie that that was cheap Made. Only saw it on YouTube but Never found out the name.