The Personal History of David Copperfield

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: August 28, 2020

4.9	USER SCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 60 Ratings

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KM123Sep 8, 2020

This is a boring mess of a movie. Disjointed in tone, weirdly paced, and can't seem to decide whether it wants to present a realistic or whimsically fictionalized depiction of the era. You can tell it is straining at points to emphasizeThis is a boring mess of a movie. Disjointed in tone, weirdly paced, and can't seem to decide whether it wants to present a realistic or whimsically fictionalized depiction of the era. You can tell it is straining at points to emphasize that a certain scene is supposed to be very funny indeed, but genuine laughs are few and far between. Some of this issue is with the source material, which is based on a lengthy Victorian novel that is generally regarded as hard to adapt. It moves from set-piece to set-piece, without much interesting going on at any of them. Weird characters are presented, each of which the writers appear to believe is much more amusing than they really are. The plot is pretty basic when it comes down to it, but meanders all over the place, seeming to fill out time. The film is under 2 hours, but you come out feeling like it was a long 3 hours at least. That's how exhausting this beast is. Some of the individual performances are reasonably good, and I honestly like many of the actors in this, but the whole is much less than the sum of these parts.

Ah, and let's talk about the anachronistically ethnically-diverse casting. Most professional reviewers seem to dutifully acknowledge how 'stunning and brave' this choice is, as is their requirement to not get fired from their respective publications. In reality, it's distracting and jarring. It's really weird seeing so many black and Asian people filling roles they would never have in 19th-century Britain, especially when the rest of the period is played more or less realistically. One reviewer made an interesting point in saying that this actually kind of diminishes the experience of people who were excluded by this society. Even more confusing, there isn't even ethnic consistency in families, e.g. an East Asian character has a black daughter; the main character who is South Asian has white parents, and nobody ever comments on this. It makes it really hard to keep track of family relations, and strains suspension of disbelief. If the filmmakers wanted to do this they should have set the film in another time period or an obvious alternate reality and kept families consistent or provided some other explanation. Maybe if the absurdity was cranked up to 11 and this was just another weird aspect, it might have been less jarring or worked better. In this context though, you can't just cast any actor in any role and command audiences to ignore your weird casting choices. I went to the TIFF screening of this and when someone meekly questioned what made the director decide on this 'colour bilnd' casting, Hugh Laurie responded in the most condescending tone and pretty much accused the audience member of racism for even asking. Which is kind of what this all feels like.

I would excuse the above if this was an actually good or funny movie or had anything interesting to say. Instead it was an excruciating two hours of my life I will not get back. Thumbs way down.… Expand

4 of 4 users found this helpful40

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marioinspaceOct 14, 2020

This adaptation is a complete mess. It's slow, but also jarring at times because characters aren't sufficiently developed and the plot threads don't connect. The casting is odd and there's no attempt to recreate the look or feel of the periodThis adaptation is a complete mess. It's slow, but also jarring at times because characters aren't sufficiently developed and the plot threads don't connect. The casting is odd and there's no attempt to recreate the look or feel of the period accurately. There's an embarrassingly forced sense of whimsy at times, and a type of deliberate, adolescent weirdness which fails to amuse. At the end, I was bored and wished I'd spent the time actually reading Dickens instead.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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SeaLadyFeb 11, 2021

This movie is one of the WORST movies ever! A travesty to Charles Dickens, stupid, drags on, could NOT wait till it was over.

2 of 3 users found this helpful21

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jffrydsSep 6, 2020

Why are so many movies allowed to ramrod their multicultral tokenism into classically Aryan themes? Of course an Italian pretending to be Scottish should have been the first clue.

5 of 10 users found this helpful55

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Mauro_LanariFeb 5, 2021

(Mauro Lanari)
"Dynamic"... "The film goes perhaps a bit too fast, doesn't grant respite between one event and another, all caught in its run-up." "Perhaps"? The epileptic rhythm denies space and time to the characters with their stories,(Mauro Lanari)
"Dynamic"... "The film goes perhaps a bit too fast, doesn't grant respite between one event and another, all caught in its run-up." "Perhaps"? The epileptic rhythm denies space and time to the characters with their stories, which one by one end up shredded, reduced to cardboard cutouts by an unjustifiably spasmodic frenzy. Is synthesizing Dickens' book an unlikely undertaking? For others I don't know, for Iannucci certainly.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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