'Pride & Prejudice': Austen's story doesn't need hip help

A good movie trailer can sell even the stupidest of films. The opposite, however, is also true — a good flick can completely miss its audience with a preview that tells the whole story in 60 seconds, or that focuses only on the naked people, shootings and forgettable hotties that studio marketing monkeys think you want to see.

So it's probably good that I saw director Joe Wright's classy new version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice before Focus Features' supposedly hip ad campaign, which features Howie Day's admittedly moving but hilariously out-of-place Collide.

Focus Features 'Pride & Prejudice' The verdict: Classically good. Director: Joe Wright Starring: Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Donald Sutherland Run time: 127 minutes Release date: Nov. 11, 2005 Rating: PG for some mild thematic elements. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Pride & Prejudice'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Apparently, Focus' marketeers thought a pop song was the only way to sell the kiddies a movie set in 18th-century England starring fully-dressed, non-bare-midriffed people who call each other "Miss" and "Mister."

Not only is this confusing, but it's insulting to the material and to you, the filmgoing public. It assumes that you are too stupid to want to see a well-made movie based on a well-known novel that's been remade about 57 times. It also assumes that you have to be fooled into the theater by a pop song and a silly ad that basically compacts the plot into a very special 18th-century episode of The O.C.

Worse, if you're a fan of the novel, or of the previous film incarnations, like Colin Firth's soulfully stirring 1995 BBC version, you might be frightened at the thought of somebody mucking up your movie and not go to see it. Which would be too bad, because not only is it pretty well done, if occasionally on the stylistically twee side, but it finally answers a question I've had for years, which is "Why am I supposed to be caring about this Keira Knightley person again?"

I've always found the actress, most recently seen (or not) in the bomb Domino, annoyingly pouty, sucky-cheeked and precious, and had resisted Hollywood and the media's incessant attempt to crown her the Next Big Beautiful Thing. Surprise! Turns out all she needed was the right director and the right setting.

Wright's careful direction makes it clear that he loves and respects the material and recognizes its modern appeal without messing it up. And he uses Knightley's wan fragility and steely attitude perfectly in her turn as Miss Elizabeth Bennet, one of five daughters of a proud but cash-poor family. Her loving but pushy mother (Brenda Blethyn) is trying to marry Elizabeth and her sisters off to suitable men at every turn, no matter how boring or annoying the guy.

But Lizzie's heart is stolen by Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), a snarky snob who barely deigns to talk to people, although he'll talk about them all he wants behind their backs. In a delicious scene that's been replayed over the years at frat parties and 2-for-1 Ladies' Nights throughout history, Darcy tells his friend Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) that Elizabeth's not all that. She overhears, of course, and Knightley's expression of trying to save face when you've been punched in the ego is priceless.

Of course, the two fall in love, and because there are actual actors and a real script involved, they can tell this with just impassioned looks and the air of things not said, rather than the ripping of bodices and the sweating up of sheets. When you've got a good impassioned look, you don't need that.

Pride doesn't feel the need to add drama that'll bring in the Laguna Beachers, because there's already so much drama already here. You've got star-crossed lovers, gossip, people running off together, lies and subterfuge, and the mother of all verbal smack-downs, courtesy of the regally snide and awful Lady Catherine (the regally awesome Dame Judi Dench), who wants Darcy to marry her daughter.

That smack-down comes when Lady Catherine rolls up on the Bennet household in the middle of the night to, as we used to say back in the day, tell Elizabeth about herself. This is a woman possessed of such entitlement and used to casting such a frightened pall over the groveling masses that she doesn't think anything of waking up your family to cuss you out in your own house.

It's a brilliant, dramatically yummy moment, and it's in scenes like this that you realize Pride and Prejudice has both enough class and sass to attract anyone — even without the pop songs.

The Flick Chick's Bottom Line: Don't let the marketing monkeys mess with your head — Pride and Prejudice is classically good.