'Emma': A pleasant period picture that doesn't elevate genre

The trailers for the new adaptation of Emma had me fooled. It looked like a fast-paced, somewhat modernized take on the Jane Austen classic. In reality the final product is unassailably likable, a sumptuous production with some winning performances.

But it fails to reinvigorate a story that's been told several times, and so for me it was a bit of a letdown.

I was hoping for either a fierce counterpoint to the staid traditional style of movies like these, which I got in The Favourite. That was a movie that was so deliciously modern even if it had some of the trappings of a stuffy, white period film. It was one of the funniest, most savage movies of 2018.

On the other end of spectrum there was last year's Little Women, which was considerably more earnest, but still invigorating because director Greta Gerwig decided to really interrogate the text she was adapting and she found ways to make us look at the story in entirely new ways.

This version of Emma doesn't take any risks. It has some nice, charming laughs -- but far too often I found myself playing Clueless (which was loosely based on Emma's narrative) in my head. I kept thinking how superior and inventive that movie was, and it's not even a particularly big favorite of mine.

I don't mean to be too harsh about it -- I am definitely not the target audience for this kind of thing. I think Ana Taylor-Joy is a wonderful leading actress, the kind of performer who can really hold the screen with just an expression. Her timing is terrific and she is totally credible in this.

The reliably funny Bill Nighy is fantastic as her father. He steals every scene he is in and appears to be acting in a much funnier, less predictable comedy.

There is no suspense in Emma, no discovery. It goes where it's supposed to go exactly when you expect it to. It's not that you don't have any fun along the way -- it's very cute and warm-hearted. But when I watch movies like these I can't help but wonder why they exist.

I get that the book it's based on is considered a classic, but why does this story need to be told now?

And then I think about how hard it is to get movies about people of color made and seen. And how if a film about our lives clears that threshold, it has to be very heightened (think Black Panther) or pretty universally appealing (think Crazy Rich Asians).

At the end of the day I don't regret seeing Emma, but I am not sure it was essential.