Austenland

With all the makings of a cult, this hit-and-miss hoot is as weird - and certainly much sillier than you'd expect - of a comedy produced by Stefanie 'Twilight' Meyer but directed/penned by the co-writer of Napoleon Dynamite.

What might have made a five-minute skit becomes an extended exercise in taking a joke for a walk round a country house before allowing it to crap on the terrace and then stamping it to death on the manicured lawn.

Simply by smiling, [Russell] robs one of the will to live.

You would be well advised to give a wide berth to this largely useless adaptation of a book by Shannon Hale.

So actively inept and so horribly precarious that it becomes curiously engrossing, like watching a monkey spin some plates or a blindfolded dog attempting to ride a unicycle.

For a while, the film gets by on silliness alone. But in the end, it all amounts to no more than a sniggery guilty pleasure.

Unfortunately, Hess and company weren't nearly as interested in Austen as they were in a thousand other boring romantic comedies.

This hallucinatory comedy boasts a fantastic level of originality.

If Austenland is supposed to criticize obsessive fandom, the ending makes no sense. If it isn't, the rest of the film makes no sense. And yet, the light, airy, innocent nature of it all is somehow pleasing enough

Instead of exploring some of the subtext of what's really going on here though, Hess rides the film into broad romantic territory.