The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)'s comments

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boulderman

Enjoyed it mostly but the plot lost me mostly and felt muddled, bloated. ~5.5/10
Career best performances by everyone

1 year 11 months ago

An absolute charmer of a Dickens adaptation, The Personal History of David Copperfield leans into the comedic elements of the novel - as it should, though some might miss some of the tragedies - and ultimately has a lot of fun with the idea that the book was semi-autobiographical and told in the first person. Copperfield does become a stand-in for Dickens himself, and director Armando Iannucci (wow, we're a long way from The Thick of It) finds ways to highlight the wonderful turns of phrase in the prose, which would normally be absent in a film. It can be zany and exaggerated because it's a story told. The memory cheats, and the author cheats more. While Dev Patel is always engaging, he's also supported by a wonderful cast bringing Dickens' characters to life - Laurie, Swinton, Capaldi, Wishaw, Gwendoline Christie, Morfydd Clark, Benedict Wong... Well, casting director Sarah Crowe has already won an award for it. Of course, Dickens's novels are just too full of incident for everything to make it into a two-hour film, and in this case, as in many such cases, I did feel like some events had been collapsed just a little too much. The dual-climax at the end didn't feel entirely natural, moving at breakneck speed toward an ending. Like Mr. Dick (surely the MVP of the film), the film needed a little more air to breathe in that third act.

3 years 7 months ago

KaramAkerfeldt

Avoid at all costs.

3 years 6 months ago