Vanity Fair

The peculiar quality of Vanity Fair, which sets it aside from the Austen adaptations such as "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice," is that it's not about very nice people. That makes them much more interesting.Read Full Review »

Witherspoon's simply terrific, and it's amazing how quickly and easily she sheds speculation that she was too modern for the role.Read Full Review »

A triumph for its director and its star.Read Full Review »

Despite its flaws, the movie is compulsively watchable, and few will be bored by it. It's a charming movie that falls short of greatness, but is still worth a solid recommendation.Read Full Review »

It almost makes you wonder whether Vanity Fair is not the perfect text for a lesson in Buddhist detachment. Certainly, Vanity Fair is a never-ending Western story that benefits from Nair's philosophically Eastern point of view.Read Full Review »

It borders on perky -- a duller, safer tonal choice for the story of a conniving go-getter whose fall is as precipitous as her rise.Read Full Review »

Nair and Witherspoon pull back from the ferocity of Thackeray's portrait: they're afraid we won't find Becky Sharp likable enough. Yes, she's the most brilliant, bold and vibrant creature in this social panorama, but she should also be chilling.Read Full Review »

Unfortunately, Nair's film doesn't so much end as fall off a cliff, the ultimate victim of viewers' heightened expectations that this briskly paced story will take them someplace -- other than around the block in a horse-drawn carriage.Read Full Review »

In an effort to blend Thackeray and "Sex and the City," Vanity Fair ends up nowhere.Read Full Review »

Thackeray said that he wanted "to leave everybody dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the story." Nair may have had other intentions, but by film's end, audiences are bound to be left dissatisfied with the choppy and confusing storytelling style and unhappy about the missed opportunity.Read Full Review »