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`VANITY FAIR' PULLS PUNCHES, BUT WITHERSPOON HAS BITE

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From: The Boston Globe
Date: 20050130
Author:TOM RUSSO

Reese Witherspoon and director Mira Nair have caught some flak for declawing their adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's sprawling 19th-century novel of bad manners, "Vanity Fair" (2004), making the story far less cynical than Thackeray intended. As brazen social climber Becky Sharp, a girl from a humble bohemian background determined to forcibly gain a foothold in polite society, Witherspoon does, certainly, bring an awful lot of perkiness to the table. The objection is that it's too much genuine perkiness of the "Legally Blonde"/Elle Woods variety when there should be more calculated ...

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