User Reviews

This is quite a well made period drama - it certainly looks like it had a decent budget. There's a good cast and it feels suitably atmospheric. Its a somewhat thoughtful film I suppose, given the story, a fairly well known story I suppose (a novel by Charles ****), though I wasn't familiar with it personally, other than by name. I'm not sure there's much I can say about it - I'm not too keen on David Walliams - I'm not exactly a fan of him normally and it felt a little 'off' to have him appear in such a period film but perhaps I'm a little unfair? judge for yourself and also it goes without saying that Helena Bonham Carter is very much suited to her role - I imagine she enjoyed playing Miss Haversham very much and she certainly looks the part, as the gothic, somewhat ghostly lady living in a dark and run down mansion/house of sorts. Yes, overall I would recommend this as a decent film of its type.

A decent adaption with good visuals and Fiennes is good but many elements feel like slight misses.

I first read the simplified version of this novel when I was 8. I liked it so much that I read the unabridged version a few years later. It is by far my favorite **** novel, so needless to say, I had "great Expectations" when I went to see this movie. Rarely does a movie live up to the book. Most of the time, when you go to the theater to see an adaptation, you come home very disappointed. (Like the time I saw the latest rendition of Les Miserables, but that's another story) But this movie did not disappoint me. At all. All the crucial points in the story were given the appropriate level of prominence. All the characters were just as I pictured them all those years back (except, maybe, for Miss Havisham, who I imagined to be more subdued. But I'm not saying Helen Bonham-Carter did a bad job there). Everything, really, was just as I saw in my mind when reading the book. So I put this among the best adaptations, along with Lord of the Rings trilogy. I know this will never get the amount of attention TLOTR got, but if you are a fan of ****, or classic novels in general, I strongly believe that you must see this movie.