Let's be realistic.

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I've heard so many great things about the novel Wide Sargasso Sea and I expected this movie to at least live halfway up to its literary counterpart. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, however, the ludicrousness of the storyline reared its proverbial ugly head.First of all, the movie's treatment of Black Jamaicans reads like something out of a Jim Crow era film. They almost function like prop sets in the background and often have a sinister aura about them. Actually, they are the agents of evil in the film. It also doesn't help that the one "good" Black character engages in clichéd voodoo practices. This aspect of the film is downright nauseating.Secondly, Mr. Rochester's character is diametrically different from the Rochester of the Jane Eyre novel. Of course, the film depicts his earlier years before he develops into who he is in the novel, but give me a break! I refuse to believe that Mr. Rochester is really so stupid and bumbling at any point in his life. Thirdly, the sex scenes are positively eyeroll worthy. Deep breaths, sweat drenched skin, and tightly shut eye lids do not make a sex scene better. Geez, it was so amateur. It didn't even make me clutch my pearls.Overall, the film is terrible. From the manner in which it develops, to its treatment of the Black characters and Mr. Rochester, it's all just bad. I'm upset that I wasted my time watching it. And now I think I'm going to feel offended for the rest of the night.

I couldn't quite bring myself to give this film a "watch" recommendation. It fell just short, in my opinion, of a good film. Oh, it had promise. There could have been a lot more done to make this film interesting. As it was, it seemed to always be missing something.Now, I understand Jane Eyre fans know all about Edward Rochester (Nathaniel Parker) and the "mad women who lives in the attic" (Karina Lombard as Antoinette Cosway). But, not having read the books, I have to rely on the movie to tell the story. In that it fails.There are just too many unanswered questions and the ending was most unsatisfying. Maybe I could go read Jane Eye and come back, but I doubt I will.

'Wide Sargasso Sea' is a film that combines a very loose film adaptation of Rhys's novel with sex scenes that are alternately hokey and hilarious (they never get it on nearly as prodigiously in the novel). That said, I *will* readily concede that the primary actors in the film did a good job. However, their abilities are wasted on a film that suffers from amateurish pacing (with the story advancing in disorienting fits and starts), inconsistent cinematographic style (occasionally stunning, sometimes questionable, such as the event early on with the parrot).Anyone looking for a faithful adaptation of the novel is frankly out of luck and anyone wanting a true background on "Jane Eyre" would do well to read the far-superior book of the same name.Cheers and good luck.

This movie takes a great, rich, wonderful novel and reduces it to the level of near soft porn. So much time is spent on silly, pointless nude scenes that the plot has to be severely condensed. Major plot points seem to happen suddenly, without context or explanation and characters are poorly developed And the nude scenes aren't even very good, they were just cheesy - after the second or third time Rochester and Antoinette stripped, I was laughing out loud.The film has some great Jamaican locations, but that's about the only good thing I can say for it.