Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

InspireGato Film Perfection

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

howardeisman I first saw "The Heiress" when it first came out. I was about 12, but old enough to be fascinated by the characters and the basic conflict. Wow! I read the James' book "Washington Square" about 30 years later. I was disappointed. It was a rambling story told by a busybody with none of the dramatic high points of The Heiress; it is Henry James" first novel and has none of the intriguing nuances of his later novels.This film stays closer to the novel than "The Heiress". Thus, it is much less of a drama. The attempt to do the book is commendable, but it is not necessarily the route to an entertaining film. Here, the characterizations are obscurely unmotivated (Finney), over-the-top (Smith), uneven and sometimes weird (Leigh), and charmless and off-putting (Chapin). The musical score is intrusive. All of this contrasts badly with "The Heiress", in which the characters had far more depth, authenticity, and appeal(certainly Morris and even the minor characters). This longer version attempts a better exposition of the characters' psychology. Good ambition but it fails. Take Dr. Sloper. A hard working, self-made man who despises Morris Townsend mainly because he is a self-centered loafer. It is not snobbery which motivates him, Morris is a gentleman, but his belief in merit and good works. He does love his daughter but she disappoints him with her shyness and inability to master much of life. He pushes her to manage better, but he is constantly frustrated. For her to marry Morris would be to shatter all he believes about how people should live. A bad guy? A good guy? All of this comes out in Ralph Richardson"s performance in "The Heiress.' Finney just seems like an nasty oaf in comparison.

gradyharp Henry James' WASHINGTON SQUARE is well served in this solid film whose screenplay was adapted by Carol Doyle and has been directed with secure wisdom of James' style by Polish director Agnieszka Holland )'Europa, Europa', 'Red', 'Blue', 'Copying Beethoven', etc). The musical score is in the capable hands of Jan AP Kaczmarek and the Director of Photography is Jerzy Zielinski, and with all these elements in place, the last ingredient in making this a successful adaptation of a Henry James novel is the cast. Fortunately the assembled cast matches the above credentials. Albert Finney is superb as the wealthy Dr. Austin Sloper who hoards his money in his mansion on Washington Square and whose overprotective rule of his less than attractive daughter Catherine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) - who is also under the influence of her overbearing Aunt Lavinia (Maggie Smith, still chewing the scenery as usual but convincing) - has put an impasse to Catherine's infatuation with the handsome but poor Morris Townsend (Ben Chaplin): if Catherine should choose to marry Morris she would be cut off as his heiress. James' models of womanhood are played well by Jennifer Garner as the niece that marries and breeds and her mother Aunt Elizabeth (Judith Ivey, currently wowing audiences in a revival of 'The Glass Menagerie'). Distance, imposed by the disapproving Dr. Sloper in escorting Catherine to Europe for a year, doesn't appear to squelch the passion between Catherine and Morris, but Morris finds work which takes him away from the returned Catherine, only to learn upon return that Catherine will not inherit her father's fortune - a glitch that sadly changes the relationship of what had appeared to be a true love romance. In the end the film follows Henry James' view of the world of his time - a palette for social criticism. Made in 1997, this film holds up very well indeed. Grady Harp

maveltre I can understand not loving this movie, but the scathing reviews are questionable. And I'm not normally one to recommend the taste of teenagers, but I want to tell you that my high school English classes, so film-weary that they are quite hard to please, liked this film and, with a bit of help with the dialogue, especially between the older adults, tuned in very quickly to the idea of the father's protectionism, not truly for his daughter's benefit, but for his own pride. (I agree with one or two other reviewers who pointed out the distastefulness of the the young Catherine's pitiful reaction to stage fright and a scene with veiled, literally, copulation in the background, not to mention that the young Catherine's character being portrayed as fat and, thus, unlikeable was unnecessary and not believable, given that the adult Catherine was so slim. But these are minor problems.) I also wasn't happy with the scene in which Catherine reacts so melodramatically to Townsend's departure, as there was surely never a Jamesian heroine who behaved so, but as a story about familial and romantic love and all its difficulties, it is definitely worth watching, especially if you are looking for a film for different age levels.

SDKruchten The potential movie extravaganza, set during the 19th century, failed to produce. With big-name actors like Maggie Smith, Albert Finney, and many others, there was no reason for the movie to fail. However, the movie lacked an ending, had a sorry excuse for a plot line, and fell to pieces with its continuity. A typical story of a rich girl and a poor boy, brought together by love and destroyed by beauty (or lack thereof) and disapproval, has a touching side of a mother's early death and an absentee father. The father, played by Finney, is a disturbed man, tormenting his daughter in life as well as death. He believes his daughter's lack of good looks would ruin his fortune by marrying beneath their social status. The actors vainly attempted to salvage what was left of the storyline. Washington Square is a black hole of ruin and destruction, wasting precious time of those who sorrowfully watch. I give this movie a 1 instead of a 0, purely for the actors' attempts. Save yourself, stay clear of Washington Square.