Rating: 
Summary: My first contact with Jane Austen
Review: I ran across this film in the 80's by pure accident. I turned on Masterpiece Theatre, and since I felt so tired I put a tape in my VCR and promptly fell asleep - not because of the movie. When I finally viewed the tape I watched it over and over during the next few weeks. I am sorry to say I had not even heard of Jane Austen at the time. Because of that movie, I have read every one of her books and seen any movie that was written from her books. I can't be objective about the Northanger Abby movie because it was what first introduced me to Austen. If I had read the book first, this review may have been different. As it is, I love the movie. It caught my fancy. In fact, I bought the movie a few years ago, since my taped copy was wearing out from periodic watching and rewatching it over the years - especially the last scene. What a pleasure to see scenes I have never seen before! The music - I love the music. Music has always been able to get me in the mood of the story, and this music definitely set the scene for me. I guess the unusualness caught my fancy. Enough about the movie - just enjoy it with an open mind and no expectations. Very seldom are expectation completely met.
Rating: 
Summary: A good movie, but nothing like the book
Review: I thought that northanger abbey was actually a very good movie, but, while it had some scenes where it was like the book, it was overdramatised and things were added in until it became more gothic fantasy than jane austen originally put it. I saw the movie before I read the book, and I enjoyed it very much, but when I read the book, it was plainly different. So here's what I reccommend. This is a five star moive if only it isn't supposed to closely resemble the original book. The two are very good by themselves, but not together. :)
Rating:
Summary: NORTHANGER SHABBY
Review: I find myself apparently in the minority, thinking, as I do, that this is one of the most delightful film adaptations of Austen's work. I find the actors appealing, and the location filming absolutely irresistible.Like others, I was at first put off by the gothic fantasy sequences. "Why, they're not in the book!" But I always try to at least understand what a filmmaker is attempting, and I soon came to feel that these fantasy sequences were actually a very humorous and clever way of illustrating just how caught up Catherine was in the fantasy and intrigue of the gothic novels with which she was so enthralled. Readers of Austen's mature works might do well to investigate some of her juvenilia. It has always struck me that Catherine Morland is a lot like the young writer Jane. Be that as it may, I find the quality of the transfer to dvd to be appallingly bad. It was obviously taken from a none too pristine video tape. The color is murky at best, the picture grainy. To add insult to injury, there are videotape "dropouts" apparent throughout the film! The quality of the image and sound are, in fact, far inferior to the VHS tape I made off PBS over ten years ago! I am thoroughly dismayed that the BBC would allow its name to be connected with such a shabby and inferior production. My three stars are the result of a somewhat impresise calculation. I would give the movie itself five stars, but the picture and sound would get ones. Taken all together...well, three sounds about right.
Rating: 
Summary: What a wonderful movie!
Review: I read the reviews on here and wondered if watching this movie would be worth my time. I've read all the Jane Austin novels and enjoy watching the movies based on them, so I decided to rent Northanger Abbey from the library. I was delighted and laughting from the start all the way to the end! I thought it would be hard for a movie to capture the humor that Jane Austin wrote her story with, but I think this movie did it. I even had to watch it again the next day and still loved it. Granted, it might not be entirely accurate to the story (though they did fairly well), but the solid acting and the humor of seeing life through the heroine's horror-romantic viewpoint made this movie well-worth watching.
Rating: 
Summary: Duddsville
Review: I purchased this movie, unfortunately! I did not watch it all the way through, however! What I did see of the movie did not satisfy me. The music was highly irritating and the fantasy scenes in between the telling of the story needed to be obliterated! I was extemely bored by the whole affair to say the least! The acting was not wholly bad, but the movie should have been approached from a totally different angle and therein lies the disappointment. I strongly suggest that you waste neither your time or your money on this movie. I truly wish I had not.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: What a dud. The acting is wooden, the soundtrack is inappropriate (saxophone in Victorian England?) and the macabre scenes look like something from a 1960's B-Horror film. I won't even waste more time writing about this flop.
Rating:
Summary: Boring & Wooden
Review: I am an avid reader and love most of the books written by Jane Austen. This version of Northanger Abbey was very disappointing. Having been moved to tears by other excellent movie adaptations of Jane Austen stories (Persuasion w/Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root, Sense & Sensibility w/Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, Emma w/Gwyneth Paltrow); This rendition of Northanger Abbey left me diappointed, confused, and mad at myself for wasting money to rent the video. The acting left much to be desired. It seemed awkward and stilted. I absolutely hated the actor's portrayal of Catherine. She was the most irritating of all. Her attempts at "wide-eyed innocence" came across as "space-out stupidity." The cuts between fantasy/dream sequences and reality were reminiscent of B-movies. This was a total waste of time and money. Until someone makes a decent movie adaptation of Northanger Abbey, please just read the book.
Rating:
Summary: Older and Wiser
Review: After having seen Mansfield Park (80's version) the latest Pride and Prejudice and Sense & Sensibilty we Austen fans were under the naive notion that all adaptations of the authors work were as wonderful. Therefore, we had no compunctions about laying out $ to purchase this video. Good heavens! If only we had known! We should have guessed we were in trouble with the tasteless "gothic scenes" which open the movie. But like fools we plodded on. Indication number two came in the form of the female leads. They looked like they were refugees from Simi Valley! The young actresses were either badly directed or actually were from the Valley or the English equivelant. Indication number three was the music. The other Austen adaptations featured lively piano pieces or suitably tear-jerking melodies. This soundtrack seems to be ripped off from the Young and the Restless. (Note to aspiring soundtrack composers: there were no saxaphones in the early 19th century) We couldn't finish this sad movie and returned it halfway unwatched. This is the worst Austen adaptation (perhaps it ties with the 1995 version of Persuasion) we have ever had the displeasure of viewing and can only warn clever Austen fans to indeed avoid it like the plague. PS- the book is well worth the time of any thinking person, enjoy Austen's delicious satire of Gothic romance.
Rating:
Summary: Wadey fails to understand satire
Review: It is hard for a lover of the novel Northanger Abbey to sit through this BBC adaptation and to keep from throwing objects at the TV screen-in fact, if Jane Austen herself were to see this, she would be somewhat amused and possibly put out. Maggie Wadey's adaptation has made Northanger Abbey into what it satirized, the Gothic novel (and the readers of Gothic novels). The role of Catherine Morland in the adaptation is portrayed fairly closely to Austen's Catherine, a open-hearted, generous girl whose imagination simply runs away with her. But the Henry Tilney of the novel is not a snuff-taking, cane-wielding, sappy-line-making hero of a Gothic novel-he is a tease, a nearly-handsome man with a messy room and a living (that's right, Henry Tilney is a clergyman, a charm that is completely dropped from the script). Some of the best scenes from novel, when Henry, completely deadpan, outrageously teases the literally-minded Catherine on diction, journals, Mrs. Radcliffe, etc., are not portrayed in the adaptation. A large section of Henry's personality is lost when those scenes are not adapted. Besides, Peter Firth's appearance is not accurate-Henry Tilney is supposed to be 24 or 25, dark hair and a brown skin, not 35 or 40 and blond. There are so many other absurdities within the adaptation that invoke surprise and disgust-who is the Marchioness, and what is she doing in the story! Why is John Thorpe less of a dunce and more of a schemer? Why is Northanger Abbey a castle? Catherine of the novel, with her romantic visions, expects hidden passages and dark tapestries, but is very disappointed to discover that Northanger Abbey is actually a comfortable, modern house-another element of satire! Why portray General Tilney as a drunk? Why does Catherine have those strange visions of Mrs. Allen threading her finger, etc.? Catherine's imagination only runs away with her at Northanger, with Henry there to correct her gently. And lastly, why are so many facts concerning the Tilney family and Mrs. Tilney's death altered unnecessarily? To make the story more "horrible?" All of these oddities and more simply are too strange to be overlooked. Oh, and Henry never "rode through the mist" on his way to propose. Such cheesiness should be eternally banned. The BBC is highly regarded in its accuracy when adapting great works of literature to the screen. Perhaps they were having off-day when they decided Wadey's Northanger Abbey actually captured the essence of the deliciously funny satire Austen wrote. Or maybe they never understood what the essence of the novel was in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid like the plague.
Review: I am a simple man, easily amused and with fairly low standards, but this tripe was the WORST movie I have ever seen (and I saw Caddyshack II). As a Jane Austen fan, I ignored the other poor reviews out of a sense of completeness...how I wish that I were left incomplete from ignorance rather than incompetence. The acting is poor, the sound worse, the sets drab, and, how shall a gentleman say this...the actors/actresses were stunningly ugly. A local high school drama class without a budget could produce a better work.
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