The New Sense and Sensibility Turns Out To Be An Old Wine Poured Into a Much Better Bottle

October 2026

 

Can too good a cast be a problem for a movie?

 

This most recent version of Sense and Sensibility...

Led me to ponder that question...

 

But first...let’s start with the dogs...

 

There were all manner of them in the new Sense and Sensibility...

So I felt like I was watching a Kennel Club ad...

 

Great Danes, sheepdogs, pugs, hounds...

Sitting on couches and laps...

Always underfoot

Stealing food...

Or just lounging about...

On any available surface...

 

But I’m not sure I would want to live in a house with that many dogs...

Doing whatever...

Which may have been the point....

 

The horses were magnificent...

Large, majestic..

And filmed in a way that made them look very intimidating...

Which I think was meant to be a male-coded message of some kind...

 

That said, these animals were more interesting...

Than the shots of bugs crawling slowly up a stalk...

That served as filler in this version of Sense and Sensibility...

 

But these scenes...

Were about all there was...

In terms of captivating visuals in this film...

 

But aren’t lush landscapes and impressive manor houses...

One of the reasons we love Regency dramas?

 

Unfortunately... this most recent foray into Jane Austen land...

Left you wondering...

 

What happened to England’s “green and pleasant land”?

 

Everyone is walking through what looks like a parched landscape...

Full of weeds...

So there is none of the physical beauty of rural England...

That makes Regency dramas such a draw...

 

And this film has none of the cinematic richness of Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice...

Or Ang Lee’s 1995 Sense and Sensibility...

 

Now I was already primed not to like this remake...

Because the cast in the 1995 film was so remarkable...

 

Or so I thought at the time...

 

And I still desperately miss Alan Rickman...

Who brought a humanity to Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee’s film...

That made you think differently about the actor who was so unforgettable ...

As the evil Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves...

So Lee rescued Rickman from a career of playing nothing but baddies...

 

And I have never seen a movie with Emma Thompson...

In which I didn’t think she was terrific...

Although Good Luck to You, Leo Grande came close ...

 

Thompson was the star of the 1995 Sense and Sensibility...

Which also had Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant...

So I thought going in...

 

How could Georgia Oakley’s remake compete?

 

Well ...quite well, actually...

 

Even if this version of Sense and Sensibility lacks the cinematic richness of the earlier version...

 

Because it is truer to Austen’s story...

Which never quite rang true in Lee’s film...

 

And now...

In retrospect...

I know ....

 

That was in part because of Lee’s “stellar cast”...

 

Ang Lee’s movie was made when Winslet and Grant were early in their careers...

And if you compare their recent performances to those in that 1995 film...

You realize they had not yet found their footing...

 

Grant has admitted as much in a hilarious exchange with Thompson on the Graham Norton Show...

In which he said that during this movie...

He was grumpy, fat...

And bad ...

 

And then got arrested halfway through...

 

And he was so stiff in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility..

His Edward Ferrars looked almost autistic...

With an affect as flat as Kansas...

 

So his relationship with Elinor never made sense...

 

And Grant and Thompson had zero chemistry...

Which Thompson explains in that Graham Norton interview...

In that ever so clever way of hers that will make you laugh...

 

So George MacKay is much better

As Edward Ferrars in Oakley’s film...

Than Grant was in the Ang Lee version......

 

Because his Edward actually looks like he might care about something...

Other than how much that stiff collar is bothering him at the moment...

Which helps the story make sense in a way it did not in Lee’s film...

 

And as we learned from 1917...

MacKay does a stoic, pained expression very well....

Because he always looks like there is a sharp rock in his shoe...

That he is just going to have to put up with it...

 

Whereas, Grant looked like he was just hired because he looked good in a Regency suit...

 

And Daisy Edgar-Jones hit all the right notes as Elinor in this more recent film...

Even if she isn’t in Thompson’s league as an actress...

 

But in a way that helped...

 

Because we weren’t distracted by her star power....

 

So Elinor’s relationship with her sister was much better explored in Oakley’s film...

Because they came across more as equals...

 

I suspect this was because in 1995 Winslet was not yet up to the task...

And she may have been a bit intimidated by being in her first major film with Thompson...

 

And in Lee’s film...

 

James Fleet’s John Dashwood was a feckless hen-pecked husband with all the seriousness of a middle schooler on the playground....

Which didn’t work as well as Tom Brooke’s more reserved performance as the sisters’ half-brother with all the money...

And a bit of a conscience..

 

And Frank Dillane is a far better Willoughby in this version than Greg Wise was in the 1995 film...

Because he comes across as less of a rake...

And not as much a caricature of the prototypical Austen bad boy....

But rather as much a victim of his circumstances as the girls...

 

Which makes Marianne’s intense attachment to him more believable...

And not just that of a naïve silly girl who has read too many romance novels...

 

Only Herbert Nordrum as Colonel Brandon fails to improve upon the 1995 film’s performance...

 

But no one could improve upon Rickman’s performance ...

 

But Oakley’s version of Sense and Sensibility belongs to Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Jennings...

The irrepressibly optimistic matchmaker...

And character you would most want to hang out with...

 

Shaw is a delight...

 

And she brightens every scene...

 

So she is just one of the many reasons Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility works better than Lee’s...

Even if it’s less visually impressive...

 

Because her cast is better suited to the characters...

So Jane Austen’s story makes sense in a way ...

That it did not in Lee’s film...

 

Which was much lauded at the time...

 

But in retrospect...

 

I think more because of the star power of the cast...

 

Rather than how Lee told the story...

 

But the glow from the cast of that 1995 film...

Who are all now, deservedly so, respected actors...

Has perhaps for too long obscured the fact...

That Lee’s Sense and Sensibility was not a well-told story...

 

And Oakley’s less flashy version is...

 

Which turned out to be a pleasant surprise....

 

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