Nicholas Nickleby Reviews

Even though I have a master degree in English, I must confess, I have never read any books written by Charles Dickens. I remember that the great Roger Ebert was a huge fan of Dickens and was probably more able to appreciate those book adaptations than me. Indeed, I have never been really fond of those movies adapted from Dickens’ work (though ‘Great Expectations’ by David Lean was a really solid feature). And indeed, Ebert loved this movie but I didn’t care much for it. I mean, there was a pretty cool cast (Charlie Hunnam, Romola Garai, Christopher Plummer, Anne Hathaway, Jim Broadbent, Jamie Bell, Edward Fox, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming) and the whole thing looked pretty good but I honestly had a hard time to care about the story. Above all, I though there was barely any nuances concerning the characters. Basically, they were either really good and nice or terribly nasty and evil. Apparently, at least according to good old Roger, it is how Charles Dickens wrote his stories but, personally, I prefer when characters are more complicated or more sophisticated than this. I mean, some of the bad guys like Wackford Squeers were borderline grotesque. To be honest, it was not bad at all, I was just not my thing, I guess. To conclude, even though I didn’t really enjoy it, it still remains a decent Dickesian drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.