THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB – starring Kevin Zegers

Today I looked up the trailer for HYSTERIA, Hugh Dancy’s new film about the very gentlemanly, very Victorian, inventor of the vibrator. It looks brilliantly funny and when I Wikipedia’d him out of curiosity (and boredom) I found out that he’d done a film with Kevin Zegers, who we all know to be our dear, darling Alec, called THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, I knew exactly which film I was reviewing next. Now, there is good news and bad news to be found within the page(s) of my enthusiastic review. The good news is that I really rather enjoyed the film. The not so good news is that Kevin only appears in it for a total of maybe two or three minutes. He makes them count, though; more on that to follow. As I’ve mentioned, Hugh Dancy makes a memorable appearance in THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB. He plays a bumbling sci-fi geek who is roped into joining an all-women’s book club by an older woman looking for a fling for her recently separated friend, and his endearingly zealous enthusiasm is cannon fodder for jokes amongst the women. The ensemble cast also stars Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace and Kathy Baker as the five women of the book club. Emily Blunt’s character, Prudie, the bookish high school French teacher, deserves a special mention. Finding herself falling out of love with her husband, she allows herself to be seduced by her very sexy, very young and very off limits student, Trey, played by Kevin Zegers.

Kevin is literally onscreen for less than five minutes, in total. He’s in four scenes, I counted. The very first, he catches Prudie’s eye and does this weird half smile thing that her heart flutter. Mine followed right behind, just so you know. I won’t give away all his scenes, because there are so few of them, unfortunately, but he’s definitely a bit of a scene-stealer when he is around. His character is obviously sexy, flirty and edgy. He reminds me more of Jace than of Alec, truth be told. But there’s this scene when he and Prudie are in a car, it’s really the climax of their little story arc, and he’s there’s this quiet intelligence that just rolls off him. It’s like a switch is suddenly flicked and there he is: that’s our Alec.

Coming from me, that’s quite a compliment; I’d had my heart set on Ed Westwick for the role and when I discovered Kevin was cast, I wasn’t disappointed, not exactly, but I was certainly unsure about him. I think there’s a lot to be said for an actor who can completely entrance the audience with such a short onscreen performance. Also, slight tangent – in some shots and under some lighting, his eyes look really blue. I’ve now seen Kevin in THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, IT’S A BOY GIRL THING (terrible movie, I’m afraid) and GOSSIP GIRL, and his hair has always been the same length. Starting to wonder if he has big ears or something…

All in all, I wish we’d seen more of Trey’s quiet intensity, but even with his brief appearance, I really enjoyed the film. It wasn’t as funny as I expected it to be, but made up for it with poignant moments and a good story line. Most importantly, it made me send out a text to all my future university flatmates. It read as follows: “We’re starting a Jane Austen book club. I call dibs on Emma.”

Anyway, that’s quite enough from me. What did you guys think? Did you like THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB? Did you love Kevin’s scenes? What’s your favourite Jane Austen novel? Sound off in the comments or Tweet me @RishamNadeem!