Moll Flanders

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

Movie Details

Cast: Robin Wright Penn, Morgan Freeman, Stockard Channing, John Lynch, Brenda Fricker, Geraldine James, Jim Sheridan, Jeremy Brett, Britta Smith, Maria Doyle Kennedy
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running time: 123 min
DVD Aspect Ratios: 2.35:1

---

DVD Features:

• Color
• Closed-captioned
• Widescreen

International rating:

Australia: M

DVD International release dates:
North America: Oct 7, 03

VHS International release dates:
North America: Jun 24, 97