Becoming Jane

The leafy middle England countryside of the 1790s is the setting for this tale of how a headstrong and independent young girl named Jane Austen (Hathaway) became a superstar of classic literature. We learn how her life and her stories are shaped by her family's attempts to marry her into money and her doomed love affair with McAvoy's charming but skint scallywag. Becoming Jane is another in a recent run of perfectly pleasant but ultimately rather unnecessary literary biopics and adaptations (see Miss Potter or Pride and Prejudice) that might make for delightful Sunday night telly if you weren't in the pub or watching Top Gear. The actors are all fine and the period is nicely captured but, on the big screen, there's simply nothing to make it stand out. Take your mum if you must. [Paul Greenwood]