I love Nicholas Nickleby! exclaims Roger Ebert of this vibrant tale of intrigue, passion and revenge. And what’s not to love? Brisk, sparkling (Entertainment Weekly), marvelously acted (Time) and featuring as terrific an ensemble as we ve seen (The San Francisco Examiner), this Golden Globe-nominated* adaptation of Dickens masterpiece is a timeless romantic adventure you’ll treasure for years! When the Nickleby family is betrayed in their hour of need, young Nicholas (Charlie Hunnam) must save the day. Join him on a remarkable journey that critics unanimously praise as a joy to watch (Leonard Maltin)!
Included is a very thoughtful and engaging commentary by director Douglas McGrath, which adds a whole new level of appreciation to the film. Another substantial extra is a solid 29-minute “making of” documentary featuring all the main cast and production personnel. The Life of Charles Dickens: “A Mirror to his Work” relates the book to Dickens’s life with comments from the cast in an all-too-brief 12 minutes. The Cast on the Cast (16 minutes) features them chatting amiably on the afternoon of the New York premiere. –Gary S. Dalkin
Nicholas Nickleby takes place in England in the counties of Devonshire, Yorkshire, Surrey, and Hampshire and in the cities of Portsmouth and London. Nicholas Nickleby is set in the mid-1820s, 15 years earlier than its publication. Dickens antedated many of his stories. But here the date is historically significant. Yorkshire at the period of the novel’s action was a kind of British Siberia. From the 18th century, abusive parents had been dumping their unwanted offspring at cheap boarding schools there. It was all about to change, just at the period Dickens was writing Nicholas Nickleby. Railways, from the late 1830s to the 1860s would network the country. The age of the stagecoach was over, the age of the railway coach began. Nicholas Nickleby is, historically, on the cusp of this revolution. Yorkshire, thanks to steam, would soon be a few hours, not days away. It was no longer remote. – John Sutherland
Starring Charlie Hunnam, Jamie Bell, Anne Hathaway, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming.