The UBIQUITOUS telling of Jane Eyre....

Interesting thing is the story of Jane Eyre and the repeated amount of times it's been made into a movie...almost as bad as Jane Austen books made into movies, ad nauseum. Funnily enough, I've had the pleasure of watching various versions of both, including the more recent Jane Eyre, which missed a lot from the book, thus not including the parakeet (see King of Queens, "Educationg Dougie," on youtube). So from my experience I've compiled a small list of the best and worse versions of Jane Eyre. Of course, this is entirely my opinion:


1983 Jane Eyre
Timothy Dalton as silly Rochester
Zelah Clark as bored Jane
11 part series(Yes, 11!), and it was unfortunately boring or as I like to say, as exciting as watching paint dry, which is unfortunate as I adore Mr. Dalton and hated he only hade a very minut bit of time in the Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie fun flick "The Tourist." Dull, dull......OY dull.

1996 Jane Eyre
William Hurt as Rochester. William acted bored, uninterested and not willing to give his all for the roll which made him do a Kevin Kostner ala Robin Hood IE: losing his English accent here and there.
Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane; she seemed perpetually bored, exhausted, unwilling to give a bit of passion as....well, Jane did become passionate about Mr. Rochester and the parakeet (kidding....just watch that episode of King of Queens).
Zeffirelli’s version is pretty & has the cutest Adele, but lacks passion. The poster is the most passionate thing about it. Skip it.

1997 Jane Eyre
Ciaran Hinds as Rochester. Loud, boisterous, his mustache was a bit too "meh" and reminded me of Dale Earnhardt for some reason
Samantha Morton as Jane who, IMO over-acted the part. Another dull one, IMO.