20
The Independent by Clarisse Loughrey
Above all, at no point during Carrie Cracknell’s directorial debut do you ever get the sense that anyone’s actually read Persuasion.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Persuasion is sufficiently bold and consistent with its flagrant liberties to get away with them. It also helps that the novel’s long-suffering protagonist, Anne Elliot, has been given irrepressible spirit and an irreverent sense of irony in Dakota Johnson’s incandescent performance.
30
Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan
It’s not hard to figure out the recipe that resulted in Netflix’s Persuasion arriving half-baked from the streamer’s busy oven. Take one measure from Clueless. Cast an American actor as the lead (Dakota Johnson). Turn Jane Austen’s most mature heroine into a Bridget Jones, slugging red wine from the bottle and winking at the camera. Filter it all through a Regency Britain that comes straight from Bridgerton. Shake, too hard, and try not to cringe as the cake collapses.
50
The problem with "Persuasion" is it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a bold, revisionist take on Austen with progressive colorblind casting and cutesy contemporary slang? Or is it a sentimental period romance that wants to get its audience's hearts fluttering as they sigh over the pining glances shared between Johnson's Anne and Cosmo Jarvis' (an endearingly awkward bright spot in the film) Wentworth? The result is a half-assed attempt at both, which only makes it all the more insulting.
38
The film proves again that the modern-day veneration of Jane Austen as the patron saint of the rom-com is also an act of simplification.
75
onally similar to Autumn de Wilde’s sprightly (and critically lauded) “Emma,” the first-time filmmaker’s cheeky and original debut seems to have been the victim of some messy marketing. The final product is, yes, fun and contemporary, but also suffused with the deep longing of its heroine, Anne Elliot (Dakota Johnson, game as anyone to bridge seemingly disparate tones).
58
Entertainment Weekly by Leah Greenblatt
This Persuasion chooses to wear its source material like a thin disposable skin, discarding many of the vital organs (brain, heart) and most ideas of subtlety as it goes. Austen may be immortal, but she's not inexhaustible; maybe it's time to tell another story and let her rest in peace.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Jane Austen’s calm, subtle novel gets the Fleabag treatment in this smirking romcom; it has more wrong notes than an inebriated squadron of harpists, including everything but a last-minute rush in a barouche to Bath airport.
40
There are bound to be viewers less familiar with the source material who are enchanted by Persuasion. However, the modern touches are just too persistent to ignore, and they take away something that the movie urgently needed — genuine depth.
20
The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide
This adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, by the theatre director Carrie Cracknell, from a screenplay by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow, is a travesty.