For those who enjoyed the book first, this film seems strangely wrong. The filmmakers are too greatly influenced by a combination of the Merchant-Ivory films, all those wonderful Masterpiece Theatre/BBC historical British dramas and a sort-of light, airy type of film-making that's completely out-of-place for this story.<br /><br />This family is living on very hard times and I don't think that's shown properly. In the book, Topaz is a much stranger character (in the book, she reminds me of a blonde version of perhaps, Morticia Addams(!) and Mortmain should not just be moody. In the book, he's much more odd...and interesting.<br /><br />I guess they got Rose and Cassandra right, but there's none of the poverty and hopelessness that's so clearly drawn in the book.<br /><br />Perhaps this one of those books that simply couldn't be properly adapted nearly 40 years after it was written.