As with any film which follows a beloved mini-series it is nearly impossible to escape the shadow. When watching this film you'll find yourself constantly comparing it to the mini-series and more often than not the memory of the mini-series comes out ahead.
That being said, I still very much enjoyed the film. As with other recent English remakes (Pride & Prejudice, BBC's Sense & Sensibility) you really appreciate the beauty of modern film making. The cinematography, the score, and the ever beautiful Castle Howard, Venice, and Oxford alone are worth the watching in my opinion. There are also some great performances. Matthew Goode's Charles rivals that of Jeremy Iron's, Hayley Atwell's Julia (in a more central role than that of the mini-series) was also quite good. I also found myself rather enjoying Charles' wife Celia (Anna Madeley) even in such a small role.
The real failure of the film seems to be the difficulty with compressing 11 hours into 2. Everything is forced to move faster and the more quite, gentle, and simple scenes are lost. What's left then is a distillation of the most dramatic moments. As a result the film loses the subtlety of the mini-series. The religious bits are played up a bit too much and makes the characters slightly unbelievable. Emma Thompson is great as always, but her character of Lady Marchmain as written is too over bearing, too controlling, too inhuman. The character of Sebastian is louder than in the mini-series and becomes jaded before you care much for him. Indeed, I didn't find myself caring particularly much for any of the characters except perhaps Charles.
Still, if you don't have 11 hours on hand to spend watching the mini-series, this is a suitable substitute and is worth watching at least once at any rate. As long as you don't go in expecting an equal to the mini-series you'll enjoy it and may even find a moment or two which improves upon the original.
