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Feb. 16 movie: Pride and Prejudice. No, not the really good BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. The really bad 1940 version with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier.

This movie is so wrong, in so many ways, I don't even know where to begin. Georg compared it to a boat that occasionally drifted vaguely on-course, but mostly just drifted. The dialogue has been changed so radically that I had been watching for 15 full minutes before I heard a line I recognized. The costumes are Civil-War era -- big hoop skirts and leg-of-mutton sleeves. Mr. Collins is a librarian. They waltz at the assembly. The Netherfield Ball has become a garden party, with Darcy and Lizzie trading quips over an archery lesson. The Hursts no longer exist, nor does Lizzie's visit to Pemberley.

All that I could have forgiven, if the characters at least had the right demeanor/attitude (we've already established they didn't have the right words to say). Only Lizzie was truly how I think of her, although Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and Caroline Bingley were also pretty much right. But everyone else was so, so wrong. Jane coquettishly approves of her mother's scheme to make her catch cold and have to stay at Netherfield. Mary is a flirt whose voice clears up at the end when she meets a nice officer. Darcy pursues Lizzie openly from nearly the first moment he sees her. By the time Lady Catherine reveals that her attack on Lizzie was a reverse psychology ploy to help Darcy, Georg and I were roaring with laughter.