I wasn’t gonna see this. Period pieces aren’t my thing. But I decided that if the stars aligned just right, I would. They did. There is one reason I was specifically interested in Emma and that’s that I absolutely love Clueless. I’ve long since heard that Clueless was based on Emma, and I’ve always been curious about how that worked. I was finally gonna answer that question.
Played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Emma is a handsome, clever, and rich young English lady. Her joy is in making romantic matches between her friends and acquaintances, without giving much thought to her own prospects. She’s taken a young friend Harriet under her wing as her latest project, and soon finds that love is more complicated than she would have thought.
Okay so Emma is Cher, she’s super close to her Dad, Harriet is Tai. I identified Josh, Elton, Travis, Miss Guiest and Mr Hall. Just from the intro describing Emma I realized that yes she absolutely is completely Cher. The Harriet storyline plays out almost identical to Tai, from the whole thing with Elton (including him taking her portrait) to dancing with the Josh character, all of it. The basic story really does translate to modern times so well, and I’m impressed with the adaptation.
But Clueless aside, what about Emma? Still not my thing. It’s only because I knew Clueless so well that I could tell what was going on and what it likely meant. I was kinda bored and jokes were going over my head. The rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it. There was laughter and a general vibe of merriment, but mostly just “huh?” from me. Granted, I was at first distracted by what should have been a Southwest Chicken bowl that was actually nachos. Then I was distracted by trying to undo the velcro on my knee brace as quietly as possible.
The film ultimately did grow on me as we got towards the end, mostly because I was happy at seeing how it all came back together into something familiar. And it looked great. The costumes and production design overall are exquisite. Was also impressed with Anya Taylor-Joy. I thought it’d be weird seeing her in a bubbly and joyful film (as opposed to something creepy like The VVitch or Split), but she fit the world and character better than I expected. It’s just not my genre. And that’s fine. It was clearly somebody’s
Emma. – \m/ \m/ \n