Grimly unimaginative feminist odyssey through the stations of orphan, servant, prostitute, artist's model, artist's wife, artist's widow, mother, and (in a manner of speaking) mother of an orphan, before a final arrival at a poorly camouflaged Happily Ever After -- all under the benediction of an Eng. Lit. "classic," with intermittent exaltation on the soundtrack from such Baroque staples as the Pachelbel Canon, the Albinoni Adagio, and other pieces as yet unwritten in the time-setting of the Defoe novel. In place of the post-Tom Jones bawdy rompishness of the 1965 screen treatment -- The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders -- writer-director Pen Densham's remake has substituted a post-Scarlet Letter sanctimoniousness, with the alabaster Robin Wright carrying a torch of Feistiness, Indomitability, Purity of Soul, etc., into the benighted past. In the process, the original novel has been as radically revised for modern sensibilities as was Roland Joffé's aforementioned and widely derided adaptation of The Scarlet Letter. But who's going to raise a cry on behalf of the understandably unread Defoe? With Morgan Freeman, Stockard Channing, John Lynch. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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