Review: The New Sense and Sensibility Puts the Sisters First — and Mostly Earns It

Review. The last big-screen Sense and Sensibility was the 1995 film starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Thirty-one years is a long shadow. Georgia Oakley’s new version, in US theatres from 16 October 2026, does not try to out-polish it. It goes muddier, younger, and — this is the choice that defines it — it puts the sisters where the suitors usually stand. Information verified through 20 October 2026.

Oakley directs from a screenplay by novelist Diana Reid, adapting the novel Jane Austen published in 1811, her first published novel. After their father’s death, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood lose their estate and move, with their mother and younger sister, to a modest cottage. Money is gone. Marriage stops being romance and becomes arithmetic. Austen knew that. This film refuses to let you forget it.

Two performances, one argument

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Elinor and Esmé Creed-Miles plays Marianne. PureWow’s reviewer found the film so passionate it bordered on violence, and an ode to sisterhood rather than a romance-first story, with the sisters’ most intense scenes played against each other, not against the men. FanBolt, in a cooler review, reached a strikingly similar conclusion from the opposite direction: Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles feel like sisters in every glance, and the most convincing love story in the film is between Elinor and Marianne.

When a warm review and a mixed review agree on the centre of a film, believe them.

Geek Vibes Nation called Creed-Miles sensational, a breakout performance that avoids the cliché trapdoor, and praised Edgar-Jones for quiet poise — Elinor governing a face that wants to say everything. Emma Hinton, reviewing on opening day, rated the film 4 out of 5 for faithfulness and 5 out of 5 for how much it makes you feel, and singled out the handling of grief: the film lets sorrow sit in the room. That patience matters. A rushed Sense and Sensibility is just costumes and proposals.

The supporting cast earns its keep. Geek Vibes Nation singled out Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Jennings, boisterous, funny, and warmer than the gossip part requires, even floating early Oscar talk — treat that as one outlet’s enthusiasm, not a consensus. Frank Dillane’s Willoughby gets roguish, rockstar energy in FanBolt’s account, and Herbert Nordrum plays Colonel Brandon as awkward and hard to read, a deliberate break from Rickman’s gravity that FanBolt judged only partly successful.

Earth, weather, 35mm — and then the dancing

Oakley shot the entire film on location in England, mostly in Devon and Dorset, with real mud and real weather, photographed by Arnaud Potier on 35mm. FanBolt notes the cast wore no makeup, with Edgar-Jones asked to remove lip balm before a take. You can decide whether that detail is method or marketing. On screen, by every account read here, the effect reads as lived-in rather than lacquered. Geek Vibes Nation put it bluntly: nothing is polished, nothing is primmed, save for the ball.

Then the ball. Hinton’s one real complaint was the dancing — women twirled up into the air, in choreography she could not place as Regency at all. She cited historian Dr Meg Kobza describing exaggerated sweeping arms, lifts and over-arched backbends more reminiscent of musical theatre than the regulated Georgian ballroom. FanBolt found the ballroom sequence flat for a different reason: the Elinor–Edward romance never caught fire, so the scene that should crackle did not. Two critics, same sequence, different failure. That is worth knowing before you buy a ticket expecting the 1995 ballroom charge.

Where the reviewers split

FanBolt gave the film a grade of B, and reported critics at around 75 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes — its own figure, offered here as that outlet’s report, not independently verified for this review. Its charges: tone wobbling between class satire and sincere romance, and a Marianne who shifts from passionate to passive between scenes, with the script sharing blame for the unevenness.

Set that against PureWow, which hoped the film would push more young people to dive into the novel, and Hinton, who advised purists to go anyway. Nobody in this set calls it a failure. Nobody calls it definitive, either — Geek Vibes Nation’s splendid, one of 2026’s crown jewels is the ceiling, FanBolt’s affectionate B the floor.

Analysis: My judgement sits nearer the warm end, with FanBolt’s reservation attached. A Sense and Sensibility whose romances run cooler than its sisterhood is not broken; Austen’s original title was Elinor and Marianne, a fact PureWow also notes, and the book’s deepest attachment has always been between the two of them. If Edward underwhelms, that costs the ending some of its release — Elinor’s restraint needs a payoff — but it does not undo two lead performances every reviewer here, sceptic and enthusiast alike, praised. See it in a cinema, while the weather in it can fill a room. Keep the 1995 version for the weekend after. You will want the comparison, and this film can stand being compared.

Sources

1. PureWow — “‘Sense and Sensibility’ 2026 Review” (7 October 2026): https://www.purewow.com/entertainment/sense-and-sensibility-2026-review
2. Geek Vibes Nation — “‘Sense And Sensibility’ (2026) Review — More Than Sensible, This Film Is Splendid” (8 October 2026): https://geekvibesnation.com/sense-and-sensibility-2026-review/
3. FanBolt — “‘Sense and Sensibility’ Review: Georgia Oakley’s Austen Has Heart, But Lacks the Chemistry” (16 October 2026): https://www.fanbolt.com/184363/sense-and-sensibility-review-georgia-oakleys-austen-has-heart-but-lacks-the-chemistry/
4. Emma Shorebreak — “Sense and Sensibility 2026 Review: What the Film Changed From the Book, and What I Preferred” (16 October 2026): https://www.emmashorebreak.com/jane-austen-literary-travel-essays/Sense-and-Sensibility-2026-Review-Book-vs-Film