Great Expectations Review

Words By

• Mad Dog Bradley

Director/executive producer Mike Newell (who nowadays prefers blockbusters like Harry Potter entries and the ghastly Prince Of Persia to period sagas) handles this, the latest in the endless filmings of Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel, with appropriate sincerity, although you have to wonder why it keeps on being turned out in one form or another (could it be because it’s out of copyright and therefore no rights have to be purchased at great expense?). A poor orphan named Pip (Toby Irvine as a kid and his brother Jeremy as a 20something) is cared for by characters including Joe Gargery (Jason Flemyng), and after a run-in with fugitive convict Magwitch (slobbering Ralph Fiennes) and times spent with loopy Miss Havisham (Helena Bonham Carter, another Harry Potter refugee), he’s approached years later by Mr Jaggers (Robbie Coltrane, a third HP stalwart!), who reports that he’s now a gentleman due to an unknown benefactor. Pip then journeys to London, and it’s here that Dickens’ story shows its political colours, especially as our slightly dopey hero is poisoned by his experiences of being rich and finds this a problem when he realises that he loves Miss Havisham’s charge Estella (Holliday Grainger, although it could have been the more intriguing Rooney Mara).

Suitably grimy (if not as filthy as last year’s Wuthering Heights), this is notable for its performances: Jeremy Irvine, who fights to make Pip more than some mere drip; Fiennes, who plays the ham-friendly Magwitch for authentic muddy sympathy; and Carter, whose portrayal of the Gothic-horror-ish Havisham, another favourite of over-actors, is somewhere between man-hater, basket case and Black Adder.