Nicholas Nickelby (2002)

Charles Dickens's bulky novels, with their bright moralism and their convoluted plots make him a favorite for adaptation to stage and screen, but the sheer length and complexity of books make the prospect of adaptation a daunting one. Douglas McGrath has succeeded in shoehorning ''Nicholas Nickleby,'' Dickens's third novel, into two hours of swift, engaging entertainment. The last production of Nicholas Nickelby that I saw was a nine hour affair, staged on Broadway in 4 1/2 hour stints, or an all day affair--literally. It was true to the book, but dreary beyond tolerance. This is a whole other thing entirely.
Needless to say, huge chunks of the book have been ditched; entire families of characters are excluded. But the book's theme and spirit have been dutifully respected. Mr. McGrath has decided to share his enthusiasm for the story, enlisting a truly magnificant collection of actors in the enterprise.
Nicholas (Charlie Hunnam) is a typical Dickens hero: fatherless, buffeted by ill fortune and possessed of a purity of heart that almost defies belief. After his father's death throws 19-year-old Nicholas, his sister and their mother into poverty, the young man's uncle, Ralph (Christopher Plummer), a coldhearted investor, gets him a post teaching at a far-off boarding school. If you've forgotten the primary meaning of the word Dickensian, the school, run by the unspeakable Wackford Squeers (Jim Broadbent) and his sadistic wife (Juliet Stevenson), will remind you. It is a dark, cold place where the innocence of the young is subjected to fiendish and gratuitous abuse. Pitch perfectly portrayed here. Nathan Lane, Anne Hathaway, and Timothy Spall, and Romala Garai all turn in excellent performances.
In trimming down ''Nicholas Nickleby,'' Mr. McGrath has unavoidably left a whole slew of things out. The love stories and genealogical mysteries that are trademarks of Dickens's narrative architecture are treated rather perfunctorily here, so the plot feels more linear than it should, but the director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs, a movie that elicits a desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose--which is saying something, indeed.