Alfonso Arau’s handsome The Magnificent Ambersons, based on Orson Welles’s original screenplay, is a brave attempt to restore the dramatic scenes lost when RKO radically recut Welles’s magnificent 1941 masterpiece, but it’s less a remake than a new take on the material. Bruce Greenwood makes a gracious and sincere Eugene Morgan, the inventor who woos heiress Isabel Amberson (a vibrant Madeleine Stowe) and finds his rival is her spoiled, arrogant son, George (played with sneering, bug-eyed intensity by Jonathan Rhys Meyers). It hits a few sour notes (notably Meyers and a terribly miscast Jennifer Tilly as the jealous Aunt Fanny), but the “new” scenes explore the sprawl of the city, the falling fortunes of the Amberson dynasty, and the almost incestuous intimacy between mother and son only hinted at in Welles’s compromised version. It may lack the grand design and cinematic grace of Welles, but it creates its own gentle take on Booth Tarkington’s turbulent novel. –Sean Axmaker
Why you may wish to watch it: This version adheres to Orson Welles original screenplay for the [1942 The Magnificent Ambersons](http://amzn.to/1P9UbYI). The 1942 film, though deemed brilliant, was severely cut and edited from his intent.
Why you may wish to skip it: It “is a run-of-the-mill period soap opera that demonstrates little depth or style” in which “every scene is delivered at the same pitch” and “the main flaw…is simply that the actors seem to have not received any direction, all of them approaching the material from different routes.” Variety
Starring Madeleine Stowe, Bruce Greenwood, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Gretchen Mol, Jennifer Tilly.