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Moll Flanders Review
122 minutes, United States (1996), 12
The fortunes and misfortunes of the Augustan period's most enterprising heroine (Wright), as narrated by her servant and confidante (Freeman, doing the dignified thing again). This is dilute Defoe for a modern audience who don't like complexity with their popcorn; a hagiography which robs the central character of the steely amorality which makes her story interesting. Moll without her cruel side is like Hamlet without his procrastinate heart, and Wright doesn't stand a chance - Densham's script is too sappy and earnest to go to work for her. Channing, as a saucily sadistic madam, provides the only relief from the sentimental victimology.

CAPSULE REVIEW -- I generally love historical pictures because it's interesting to experience the world from a different perspective. In the case of MOLL FLANDERS, it is makes me glad I wasn't born in 17th Century England. Robin Wright does an impressive job as the constantly beleaguered title character who is just looking for a better life. Abused as a child and forced into prostitution to survive, Moll's life is anything but a bed of roses, yet she continues to have hope that it will work out in the end. A brief turn with love, sets her on the path to marriage and motherhood, but it seems happiness just isn't meant to be. In the end, Moll's refusal to give up on her dreams wins her the reward she so justly deserves. This is a dark, dark tale made enjoyable by the performances of Wright, Freeman and Channing. It's probably one of the truest looks at life during this time and that's a scary thing. Life was hard for women, disease was rampant and poverty the norm. Though it has it's slow moments, Moll's indomitable spirit infuses this film with a light that refuses to be ignored. That it work's out in the end, is somewhat unbelievable, but also a relief after all she's been through. Moll deserves something better and this film delivers her story in a powerful and entertaining way.

Robin Wright gives an adolescent, one-note performance as Daniel Defoe's 18th-century heroine, who has successive experiences as an abandoned child, a prostitute, a wife (five times over!), a thief, an artist's model, a felon, and much else. Writer-director Pen Densham takes a Forrest Gump-like sentimental angle on Moll's many manifestations (quite a bit different from Terence Young's bawdy 1965 film version) and mostly succeeds in making a movie that is too silly, precious, and weepy. Morgan Freeman plays a narrator (who doesn't exist in the book), and there are some good performances from John Lynch, Stockard Channing, and Jeremy Brett. But by the time this wobbly adaptation reaches its sappy conclusion, one can't help but feel the overriding power of the film is to insult the intelligence with treacle. --Tom Keogh