"The Jane Austen Book Club"

Jane Austen is capable of solving all the world's problems. Well, not the minor piddly ones such as the war in Iraq, global warming and the economy, but the really big important ones like should I stay in my marriage, should I cheat on my spouse, should I be serving red or white wine with this meal. You know, stuff like that.

At least, that's the premise of Robin Swicord's "The Jane Austen Book Club," her superficial adaptation of the book of the same name (unread by me) by Karen Joy Fowler. I gather from this film that if Jane Austen was alive today, she probably would be writing advice to the lovelorn columns for the daily newspapers and self-help books instead of novels.

I have read some reviews of "Book Club" that claim you don't have to be familiar with the works of Jane Austen to appreciate this film, reviews, I am convinced, that were all written by critics familiar with the works of Jane Austen. Don't believe it. That's like saying you don't have to be a mathematician to appreciate an algebriac formula.

My familiarity with Jane Austen extends only to the film adaptations of her novels that I have seen: "Sense and Sensibility," "Emma, "Mansfield Park" and four different versions of "Pride and Prejudice," including one from Bollywood. But, I gotta tell ya, none of her characters reside in my memory bank, not like Marge Gunderson or Indiana Jones or Travis Bickle or Randall McMurphy or J.J. Gittes, Mrs. Robinson, Norma Desmond or Charles Foster Kane. But that's me.

Austen and her creations, however, are the center of the universe for the characters in this film, which centers on five women and one embarrassingly endearing man who form the titular club. Each month they read one of the six Austen novels (in addition to the ones mentioned above, there's "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey") and one of them then hosts and leads a discussion on that month's book. The six are Bernadette (Kathy Baker), the club's ringleader; Jocelyn (Maria Bello) a single woman who breeds dogs; Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) who is told in the movie's first act that her husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits) is leaving her for another woman; Allegra (Maggie Grace), Sylvia's and Daniel's lesbian daughter; Prude (Emily Blunt), a high school French teacher who is feeling estranged from her uncaring husband (Marc Blucas) and is moving toward an affair with a student (Kevin Zegers); and Grigg (Hugh Dancy), the one male in the group, a science-fiction buff roped into the club because he's attracted to Jocelyn.

The film is divided into two parts that run concurrently. One is the meetings of the group in which they discuss that month's book and the other is their private lives which seem to be (of course) paralleling the lives of Austen's characters.

Of the private lives, there is one that is maddening and one that is somewhat interesting. The maddening one is the dance of Jocelyn and Grigg. They meet cute at the beginning of the film and you know they are going to wind up together at the end, but the machinations of the plot force them to circle annoyingly around this inevitability for the film's entire running time. The interesting one is Prude's, largely because Emily Blunt, who was such a revelation in "The Devil Wears Prada," comes through with another amazing performance that makes you feel about Prude exactly the way you are supposed to feel about her at every stage of the film. Trust me, these feelings undergo radical transformations.

The film has a manufactured, sappy ending that is totally unbelievable. If you want to be held somewhat in suspense, don't read the rest of this paragraph, but the film ends with Sylvia and Daniel back together. How this woman could be so weak as to take back this lout is beyond me. I give that relationship six months--tops!!!--before he leaves her again for another woman and smashes her heart in a million pieces.

I am going to come down right in the middle on this one, neither recommending nor condemning it. It really depends on how you feel about Jane Austen. If you are a fan (and, if you are, you have probably already read Fowler's book as well), then, by all means, rent this movie, curl up on the couch before winter ends completely and watch it. I'm betting it will make you feel warm all over. If, like me, you have no feelings about Jane Austen one way or another, I would suggest you bypass this one. A tip for a guy whose wife or girlfriend wants him to watch this movie with her: You might respond with a line from the film. "Sure. Isn't Austen the capital of Texas?"

Grade: C