Great Expectations

Orphaned as a child and raised by his harsh sister and her kind husband, a blacksmith, Pip expects to spend his life in a country village. Two encounters change that: helping an escaped convict on the marshes, and being sent to entertain the wealthy recluse Miss Havisham and her ward Estella, with whom he falls in love. Years later a lawyer informs Pip that an unnamed benefactor will fund his education and life as a gentleman in London, where he is reunited with Estella and hopes to win her, while the source of his new fortune remains concealed.

Mike Newell directed this adaptation of Charles Dickens's novel, scripted by David Nicholls. It is the tenth of Newell's listed feature films, arriving between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, and coming after earlier literary and period work such as Enchanted April and Love in the Time of Cholera. Jeremy Irvine plays Pip, with Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham, Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch, Holliday Grainger as Estella, Robbie Coltrane as Mr. Jaggers and Sally Hawkins as Mrs. Joe. The production was mounted by British and American companies, including the BBC's film arm.

Worldwide takings of around 6 million dollars were modest relative to the film's scale. Audience responses are middling and closely matched, with IMDb showing 6.3 from about 14,000 votes and TMDB 6.4 from roughly 361. A critics' rating of 6.2 from 76 reviews sits alongside those viewer scores rather than standing apart from them.