[Knightley's] performance." At the time, BBC film critic Stella Papamichael considered it Knightley's "best performance yet." However, The Daily Telegraph critic thought Knightley's acting skills slight, in her view, "Someone who radiates little more than good-mannered perkiness", and that between her and Macfadyen there was "little spark". Critics were divided about Macfadyen's portrayal of Darcy, expressing pleasant surprise, dislike for his lack of gradual emotional shift as in the novel, and praise for his matching the insecure and sensitive personality of the book character better than Firth. Critics also drew attention to other aspects of the film. Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, Sandra Hall criticised Wright's attention to realism for being "careless with the customs and conventions that were part of the fabric of Austen's world." In another review, Time Out magazine lamented the absence of Austen's "brilliant sense of irony", remarking that the film's "romantic melodrama's played up at the expense of her razor-sharp wit." More positively, Derek Elley of Variety magazine praised Wright and Moggach for "extracting the youthful essence" of the novel while also "providing a richly detailed setting" under Greenwood and Durran's supervision. Equally pleased with the film was the San Francisco Chronicles Ruthe Stein, who wrote that Wright made a "spectacular feature film debut" that is "creatively reimagined and sublimely entertaining". Claudia Puig of USA Today called it "a stellar adaptation, bewitching the viewer completely and incandescently with an exquisite blend of emotion and wit." Accolades Impact and legacy Wright's adaptation failed to have the same cultural impact as the 1995 serial and has since attracted sharply-divided opinions. However, even three years after the release, Knightley was still associated with Elizabeth Bennet among a generation of young viewers who had not seen the 1995 production. Given the varied opinions about the film, JASNA published an edited special issue of its online journal Persuasions On-Line in 2007 with the collaboration of nineteen Austen scholars from six countries; the intent was to foster discussion and stimulate scholarly analysis. JASNA had done this only once before, for the 1996 film Emma. Pride & Prejudice impacted later productions in the costume drama and heritage film genres. Literary critics protested that Wright's adaptation effectively "popularized Austen's celebrated romance and brought her novel to the screen as an easy visual read for an undemanding mainstream audience." Carole Dole noted that the film's success "only made it more likely that future