Genre: Romance, Drama, Period Piece, Love, Marriage, Melodrama
Tagline: All's fair in love & war.
Plot: The daughter of a starving English artist and a French chorus girl, Becky is orphaned at a young age. Even as a child, she yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright promises. As she leaves Miss Pinkerton's Academy at Chiswick, Becky (Reese Witherspoon) resolves to conquer English society by any means possible. She deploys all of her wit, guile, and sexuality as she makes her way up into high society during the first quarter of the 19th century.Becky's ascension to the heights of society commences when she gains employment as governess to the daughters of eccentric Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins). Becky wins over the children, and the Crawley family's rich spinster aunt Matilda (Eileen Atkins) as well. The rural Hampshire household comes to find her indispensable, and Matilda comes to confide in the bright young woman. But Becky knows that she cannot be a true part of English society until she moves to the city. When Matilda invites her to come live in London, Becky eagerly accepts. There, Becky is reunited with her best friend Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), who - having grown up comfortably - does not share Becky's more brazen ambitions. Hewing close to the family she already knows so well, Becky secretly marries dashing heir Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy) - but when
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 Despite its flaws, the movie is compulsively watchable, and few will be bored by it. It's a charming movie that falls short of greatness, but is still worth a solid recommendation.  --James Berardinelli (ReelViews)
Reese Witherspoon as an "early feminist" is just one of many woeful missteps in Mira Nair's disastrous take on Thackeray's literary classic.--Charles Taylor (Salon)
The peculiar quality of "Vanity Fair," which sets it aside from the Austen adaptations such as "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice," is that it's not about very nice people. That makes them much more interesting.  --Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times)
“Vanity Fair” is a dull and mostly lifeless adaptation of William Makepeace Thackery’s 19th century novel. While the cinematography is as beautiful as leading lady Reese Witherspoon, the tone and pace of the film are far too muddled to make for an interesting time at the movies. D--Edward Havens (FilmJerk.com)
The tea-and-gossip costume drama is a tough genre to conquer, and Mira Nair's take on William Makepeace Thackery's expansive "Vanity Fair" is almost a complete disaster. D+--Brian Orndorf (FilmJerk.com)
Vanity Fair is watchable thanks to some decent supporting performances. 5/10--Aaron West (Movie-Vault.com)
...decently-acted and good looking film that’s worth your time and money.  --Sean O'Connell (FilmCritic.com)
In high society if you are prim and proper and have all the appropriate paperwork to go with it, then society's doors are held wide open for you. Not that there is anything behind those doors, really.  --Katherine Brodsky (MovieWeb)
Vanity Fair is one of the most entertaining and immersive films of the year. I will not soon forget it. ... In the fashion of Gosford Park, which co-adaptor Julian Fellowes took the Oscar for, Vanity Fair ranks among the best period dramas of recent years. --Danny Baldwin (BucketReviews.com)
Mira Nair’s telling of Thackery’s classic, VANITY FAIR, is a lush, sprawling, sensual film that totters unevenly under the weight of its own ambition. It’s an apt metaphor considering that its heroine, Becky Sharpe, has the same Achilles Heel. Blithely skipping through so many decades of necessity leads to a feeling of sketchiness in some details and characters.  --Andrea Chase (Killer Movie Reviews)
Aaw, the exquisite dullness of bourgeois cinema, so intensely preoccupied with period detail, solemn men and pale girls. Nothing of consequence has to happen, nothing of interest has to be said, it's all about the appearance of meaning and the pretense of sophistication.  --Kevin N. Laforest (Montreal Film Journal)
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| Directed by |
Mira Nair
Monsoon Wedding, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, Salaam Bombay! |
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| Cast |
Gabriel Byrne
The Usual Suspects, Enemy of the State, End of Days |
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 | Rhys Ifans
Notting Hill, Little Nicky, The Shipping News |
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 | Bob Hoskins
Brazil, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Enemy at the Gates |
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 | Jim Broadbent
Moulin Rouge!, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Gangs of New York |
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| This film, which aims to expose the banal reality behind the grande facade of high society, itself proves to have no depth. 66/100 --Dan Jardine (Apollo Guide)
Indian-born filmmaker Mira Nair spices up her adaptation of the classic Victorian novel "Vanity Fair" with an exuberantly colorful palette and a subtly modern sensibility.--Megan Lehmann (New York Post)
Witherspoon shows that there is much more to her as an actress than mere cuteness and smiles, wading through a cavalcade of changing emotions and character resolutions to create an indelible, flawed—but not despicable—female role. --Dustin Putman (The Movie Insider)
The result is a highly satisfying period-style soap opera with heaving bosoms, elaborate hairdos and a sweeping look at history.--Paul Clinton (CNN Showbiz)
The movie crams in so many of the events and characters of Thackeray's 900-page novel that the story often seems to be moving on fast-forward, pausing here and there to introduce a character, then skipping ahead — from London to the country to Brussels and on, eventually, to India.  --Jack Mathews (New York Daily News)
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