I don't like using the word "awful" to describe any work of the cinema for which a great deal of time, effort, talent and money is spent in its creation but Zefferelli's attempt to adapt Charlotte Brontë's novel 'Jane Eyre' is a total waste of time.<br /><br />The script is lacking in finesse and power, everything explained to the viewer in no uncertain terms, leaving little to the imagination. The lead actors are woefully miscast, clearly hired for their star names, and the musical score drippy and dull. Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt have absolutely no chemistry with one another at all. She is like a wet noodle, worse even than Joan Fontaine, who at least was capable of some modicum of emotional involvement in what should be a story of frustrated passion. And William Hurt acts the entire film on one tone and that tone is flat and devoid of energy. Of course the limp and vapid script does not aid any of these otherwise fine actors in their efforts to bring any whiff of life to this flick.<br /><br />Joan Plowright's Mrs Fairfax is like some Disney creation who keeps popping up to sweeten scenes in which she would have been best left out. <br /><br />There is no mystery surrounding the story of Rochester's first wife. The role of the would-be second wife, played like a Barbie Doll by Elle MacPhearson, is an empty cipher.<br /><br />Fiona Shaw, a very great actress, is completely wasted as Jane's Aunt, Mrs Reed. She would have been better-cast as Mrs Fairfax. Only Amanda Root, as Jane's beloved school teacher, evokes any authentic sympathy or believability. <br /><br />I saw this version of 'Jane Eyre' after viewing Robert Young's for British television, made in 1997, starring Ciaran Hinds, Samantha Morgan and Gemma Jones. There is no comparison. Young's vital, romantic and deeply moving version is like an exploding nova compared to Zefferelli's wet squib.<br /><br />I will be interested now to see the 1970 version with Timothy Dalton, about which I've read some very good things on this web-site. I am amazed at how many people liked Zefferelli's Yorkshire picture book. <br /><br />About all I can say good about this film is that the house is beautiful and the cinematography vividly colored, beyond that it is a complete dud.