British Actress Blog

Great Expectations (2012)

Score: 6/10

Director: Mike Newellr

Stars: Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Toby Irvine.

The Honorable Mention Series:

Great Expectations

Helena Carter

Synopsis: A young boy experiences a series of events that changes his life and gives him an exciting adventure.

Review: A young boy name Pip ( Toby Irvine ) is given a job as an apprentice blacksmith. He falls in love with a young girl named Biddy ( Bebe Cave ) and wants to marry her. Fate plays its part and separates him from her only for the two to meet each other again when they are much older. She is betrothed to another and he is determined to change her mind.

Helena Bonham Carter

Miss Havisham

The great Helena Bonham Carter ( Bellatrix Lestrange ) does well in this film. A complex character with elaborate wardrobe is where she as an actress shines. This actress has great range in films such as The Theory of Flight (1998), Fight Club (1999), and Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows Part-1 (2010). Ryan Fiennes ( Lord Voldemort ) plays a weird criminal who escapes from police custody. This is a familiar concept from the Victor Hugo adopted movie Les Misérables (2012) where both Hugh Jackman's character Jean Valjean and Ralph Fiennes’s character are bedazzled and completely psycho until someone talks some sense back into their heads, pulling them psychologically out of survival mode.

Pip

Toby Irvine

The film focuses on the concept of family, adventure, and love. No matter what happens family comes first. This is a lesson that our main protagonist must learn the hard way as with many young men who are arrogant and foolhardy. Adventure is something so many young people are looking for. The film Wanted (2008) with James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman is a very typical ( not in a good way ) story of a young man who seemingly comes from nothing and finds out that he is “special”. Stories like this are similar to TV shows like Legion, Merlin, and Camelot. This concept is usually filed under "young adult" ( media that most people hate ). The main protagonist goes beyond his normal boundaries for the love of a young woman. This is seemingly how babies are born. This fool of a main protagonist is mean to his family because his they don’t act like some stiff and stuffy rich person of the time, as though the rich really care about him. Without the money he has they would not even notice or acknowledge that he even exists. I feel like the main protagonist is still too old to act like this even if his is young. One would think that at the very least he would be able to think with his own mind being that he has been on both sides of the tracks since he was rich and poor.

Biddy

Bebe Cave

The cinematography is inconsistent as well as the color. There are times when the film is washed out and the cinematography has missed opportunities. Other times the film looks absolutely perfect, pure perception. The backgrounds, wardrobe, and set dressing are very high quality. This is a book compacted into a two hour film which gives us plenty of story and plot twists. I really did enjoy watching this film. There are so many different versions of this film as well as TV series, plenty of times I almost watched the wrong movie. I know that some people are angry over changes from the book written by Charles Dickens but I am reviewing a film not a book. As for this movie, its slightly better than average but very predictable. Watch this if you’re bored.

More Films from Helena Bonham Carter:

Cinderella (2015)

The King’s Speech (2010)

Suffragette (2015)

Fight Club (1999)

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

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