Persuasion: Netflix viewers evoke “cringey” dialogue in the new Jane Austen adaptation

The new version of Netflix conviction is called out for his “cringey” dialogue.

The film, starring Dakota Johnson in the lead role of Anne, was released on the streaming service on Friday (July 15).

But those who have seen the Carrie Cracknell-directed film are urging viewers to stay away from it — and highlighting certain lines of dialogue as evidence why they should do so.

In the film, Johnson’s character can be heard saying, “Now we’re worse than exes, we’re friends.” She also describes herself as an “empath,” saying in a particular scene in reference to people’s looks, “It’s often said, ‘If you’re a five in London, you’re a ten in Bath.’”

“Haven’t we suffered enough as a society!?!?!!” one Twitter user asked after seeing the film, and another wrote: “Jane Austen is crying and shaking and throwing up in her grave after Dakota Johnson said hat: ‘Now we’re worse than exes, we’re friends’ conviction on Netflix.”

One Austen fan added: “What everyone misses about Netflix conviction is that the dialogue would be spasmodic even on a modern romcom. I’m not an Austen purist, it’s just bad.”

Critical reception was also extremely frosty.

“The PERSUASION embargo is up so I can finally say it’s the worst Austen adaptation I’ve ever seen.” bustle‘s Morgan Leigh Davies wrote on Twitter. “Absolutely unforgivable. Abolish Netflix. Abolish Dakota Johnson.”

In the meantime, The Independent‘s film critic Clarisse Loughrey agreed that Johnson was “a woefully miscast” in the film, adding, “At no point do you ever feel like anyone is actually reading conviction.

“For those with even the slightest affinity for Austen’s work, it is a little mortifying to watch – to see one of her most beautifully sculpted protagonists, a sad ship haunted by the ghosts of lost love, stripped of her poetry and on an Instagram caption reduces pitfalls of millennial dating.”

Loughrey also gave the film one star The guard‘s Wendy Ide, who called the film “a travesty.”

The Telegraph Critic Tim Robey said in his two-star review that Cracknell’s adaptation “comes with an almost total disregard for the alleged source material”.

Brian Viner, writing for Daily MailShe called the film “torture” and “really horrible.” He added that the decision to have Johnson’s Anne repeatedly face the camera to break the fourth wall shows a “willful misunderstanding of the book.”

This adaptation of conviction was written by Alice Victoria Winslow and Ron Bass. Co-stars are Cosmo Jarvis, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Richard E Grant.