Absolutely terrible! This is the worst Jane Austen adaptation of all time. Can you imagine Jane Austen's characters with a background music of electric guitar and saxophone mixed in with some kind of spacey operatic female wailing?! And the dream sequences seemed like drug-induced hallucinations rather than a naive, innocent girl with an overactive imagination. I wish these were the only problems with this movie... Katharine Schlesinger looks like a complete idiot, wide-eyed, a toothy and silly smile when not awed, when her small chin dropped to her chest. Absolutely silly. Peter Firth as Henry Tilney is pathetic. Then the huge, Marie Antoinette-style headdresses clash with the (mostly) correctly styled Empire gowns. And some of the make-up is simply insane and not reflective even of the more daring cocottes of that time! Some scenes are absolutely puzzling, like the one at the baths, when men and women were bathing together--an absolute no-no at that time; people were wearing china plates hanging from their necks with strings. The plates floated on the water, containing mysterious pieces of... something--soap, aromatic herbs, food? Your guess is as good as mine. The only thing I am glad is that poor Miss Austen is no longer alive to see the raping of her book...

This was the first version of Northanger Abbey I ever saw. My first glimpse of Jane Austen's first novel (some dispute that) was ...interesting. I'm sorry, the soundtrack didn't cut it at all. Modern 80s music and Jane Austen DON'T MIX. In terms of the acting, it was enjoyable, but undeniably different from the warm, witty demure of Jane Austen's style I'm used to . I found Northanger awfully dark; Tilney's father -- ohmygoshCorneliusFudge-- I found sortof creepy, and almost perverted. Tilney had a peculiar personality, and Catherine's eyes were HUGE and very blue -- I felt that brought out her wonderous and almost infantile approach to life, especially first going to Northanger Abbey. My sister says the book is actually very witty because Austen (in that way of hers) pokes fun at the Gothic novels by people like Radcliffe which were very popular at the time. About reading the book, I'm intrigued. If the music had been different, and some of the clothes less contemporary, I'd say this version is nice with a fresh, new approach.

I agree with the previous comment. This was a strange, 80's style twisted adaptation of Jane Austen's story, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. I am a devoted Austen fan, so others who have not read the book might like this movie. But the score is distracting and doesn't fit the period at all.

This is bleeding awful! I think the directors saw Ken Russell's "Gothic" and tried to lift a few ideas. Worse, it has an unrelenting '80's soundtrack with Enya-like breathy vocalize, electric guitar and saxaphone. In Jane Austen? A waste of good actors.