The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Sorry, but if you have seen the 1977 version with Nicola Pagett and Stuart Wilson, you have seen the best. It does take a serial installment versus a movie rendering to give this vast story justice. This updated version attempts that, but lacks the authenticity of the superior qualities of casting, direction, acting and storyline found in the 1977 offering. This 2000 version is quite crude by comparison, only surpassing in the more up-to-date production techniques available. Who care about those when dealing with a classic work, and who misses them for the vast difference in foundational qualities. This is the cruder offering in every sense of the word. The leads are weak, ineffectual and even far less attractive. The age factor is disregarded as Anna appears older than either her husband (who is 20 years her senior in the book) and her lover. This project is much weakened by the gratuitous and tasteless animal sexual element ascribed to the principals to the expense of heart connections. Untrue and violating of the classical source material. Disgusting contribution. Even the earlier shallower movie contributions avoided the offenses of this shoddy offering.

I've seen almost all the versions of Anna Karenina, and I'm trying to compare them with the book. So far, this version is the most true one to Tolsty's novel. It is very detailed which helps to express the true feelings of the characters the way Tolstoy created them. I didn't like the actors much, especially Anna, she's not attractive enough to play Anna. The perfect actors for Anna Karenina are in the 1997 version. Sophie Marceau made an excellent Anna, with her beautiful young flirtatious look, and the confidence with which she carries herself even when she's in despair.Helen McCrory just looks ill all the time, even in the beginning, she just doesn't have that presence that Tolstoy's Anna does. If the actors and settings of this movie were substituted with the ones from 1997 version, this movie would be absolutely perfect! Although it doesn't give the whole picture of 19th century Russia the way Tolstoy pictured it and the way the 1997 version does, this is still the most accurate version, and expresses the true meaning of the novel. Definitely recommended for people who haven't read the book, as well as those who have!

This is quite an accurate adaptation of Tolstoy's 800+ page novel. While there were obviously many changes and omissions, overall, the whole film rang true to the spirit of the book, and I found it very a very satisfying viewing experience.While most people are aware of the love triangle plotline featuring Anna Karenina herself, the book's main focus is on the life of Konstantin Levin, and what I think this film does so well is to provide more focus on that character and his relationship with Kitty than previous adaptations have done.In addition, Anna's estranged husband, Alexei Karenin, is usually portrayed as a totally evil villain. His portrayal in this version of the story, though is done perfectly. While we may not appreciate his choices, we are also allowed to see his character in a multidimensional light, which helps make the story more complex and less of a simplistic soap opera.While the sets and costumes all felt very authentic, I think that what was mostly missing from this were large scale sets to help us see the grand setting of Russia. We needed to see pictures of trains steaming across Russian countryside, we needed to see the inside of an Opera house or two, and we needed to see Levin struggling in the open farming countryside. Instead almost every scene is an interior shot, or a small scale street scene. It is a minor quibble, but without these scenes, I was left feeling that as good as it was, this film adaptation didn't reach perfection liked I hoped it would.

Anna Karenina is one of the great novels of the nineteenth century that has inspired a great many adaptations for cinema or television. This most recent TV version (aired now in North America) is one too many. It is appallingly rudderless, maybe because it is increasingly more difficult to see a point in adding to the already high stack of versions. The acting lacks zest for the most part, the length or the treatment of this version does not do justice to the richness of the novel, and the sex scenes are so disingenuously artsy as to be laughable. More critically, the key characters of Anna and Vronsky are played by actors lacking both presence and chemistry. In my opinion, this version fares very poorly compared with the other TV miniseries, that of 1977 starring Nicola Pagett (Anna), Eric Porter (Karenin) and Stuart Wilson (Vronsky).