for those who enjoy the book first and this film seem strangely wrong . the filmmaker be too greatly influence by a combination of the merchant ivory film and all those wonderful masterpiece theatre or bbc historical british drama and a sort of light and airy type of film making that completely out of place for this story . this family be live on very hard time and i do not think that show properly . in the book and topaz be a much stranger character ( in the book and she remind me of a blonde version of perhaps and morticia addams ( . ) and mortmain should not just be moody . in the book and he much more odd . and interesting . i guess they get rise and cassandra right and but there none of the poverty and hopelessness that so clearly draw in the book . perhaps this one of those book that simply couldn not be properly adapt nearly 40 year after it be write .