"Is not general incivility the very essence of love?" So begins The Jane Austen Book Club with this astute observation from Pride and Prejudice. For Jocelyn (Maria Bello), a never-married, fortyish breeder of Rhodesian Ridgeback show dogs, love's very incivility threatens her need to be in control (think Austen's Emma). In stark contrast, Jocelyn's good friend Bernadette (Kathy Baker) is an incurable romantic—a six-time married free spirit in her mid-50s and devout Austen-phile. It's Bernadette who persuades Jocelyn to help her form the book club, which will hopefully provide a much-needed diversion for their friend Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), recently dumped by her husband of 25 years, Daniel (Jimmy Smits).

Although Sylvia initially wants nothing more than to curl up in a fetal ball and eat junk food in misery, she tentatively agrees to join the book club, along with her 20-ish lesbian daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), a serial monogamist and extreme sports junkie. Whereas Allegra is a tomboyish extrovert, Prudie (Emily Blunt) is a tightly wound bundle of neuroses who peppers her conversation with French phrases (she's a high school French teacher) and struggles to find common ground with her average Joe husband, Dean (Marc Blucas). Finally, there's Grigg (Hugh Dancy), a likable recovering nerd, sci-fi fan, and Austen virgin, whom Jocelyn invites to join the book club, primarily to fix him up with Sylvia—despite the painfully obvious fact that he's smitten by Jocelyn. As the six members of the book club read six Austen novels, the ups and downs of their various romantic entanglements unfold in the seriocomic tradition of their favorite author.

When it comes to adapting acclaimed novels for the big screen, Swicord has an uneven track record. A Writers Guild of America nominee for scripting Gillian Armstrong's triumphant remake of Little Women (1994), Swicord fared less well with Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Rob Marshall's opulent but superficial film version of Arthur Golden's bestseller. Going the double hyphenate route as writer/director on The Jane Austen Book Club, Swicord happily doesn't make the mistake that so many filmmakers regularly commit when turning novels into films. She doesn't resort to voiceover to fill in the missing narrative blanks, or spell out what's glaringly apparent (see The Joy Luck Club). However, she errs in putting too neat and tidy a spin on the characters' relationships; we don't get a strong enough sense of the characters' interior lives for their heartbreaks and temptations, i.e., Prudie's near-dalliance with a student (Kevin Zegers), to evoke genuine pathos. This is most evident in Swicord's treatment of the character of Bernadette, who's comparatively pushed to the narrative sidelines until the final scene. Why Swicord chooses not to explore the life of the oldest woman character outside the book club is puzzling, given that Baker plays her as a vital and warm-hearted woman who hasn't given up on romance. Or that Fowler's 67-year-old character of Bernadette has been transformed into a svelte and stylish woman in her mid-50s. The characters of Jocelyn and Grigg undergo a similar metamorphosis in the casting of Bello and Dancy, a glam and toned Hollywood version of Fowler's May-December romance between two middle-aged bookworms.

All that aside, The Jane Austen Book Club is not without its breezy charms and occasionally sharp observations about that most uncivil of emotions, love. And at the very least, Swicord's film should inspire moviegoers to read (and reread) those six Austen classics that have lost none of their resonance, nearly 200 years after they were first published.