I'll give credit where credit is due: Joseph Andrews is a very faithful adaptation of Henry Fielding's novel of the same name, capturing the tone and atmosphere of the novel as well as its plot and characters. It's the broadly comic, often slightly raunchy story of a handsome young man named Joseph (Peter Firth), who is virtuously in love with a fellow servant, an equally virtuous girl named Fanny. All is not roses for the young couple, however, for Joseph's employer, Lady Booby (Ann-Margret), is determined to get Joseph into her bed. Joseph, of course, wants nothing of it; hijinks ensue. Love is lost, love is found, long-lost relatives are discovered, hidden identities revealed, and so on.

The trouble is, I thoroughly disliked Joseph Andrews in its original novel form, and its film version didn't strike my fancy any better. A substantial part of why it just doesn't work for me lies in its literary context. Joseph Andrews is a farce, a parody of a very specific literary genre that was all the rage in 18th-century England. Novels like Samuel Richardson's Pamela were best-sellers with their tales of innocent servant girls remaining virtuous in the face of their masters' attempted seductions. Option A was a happy ending, in which the girl's virtue paid off and she convinces the master to marry her, and they all live happily ever after; Option B was the tragic ending, in which the girl came to a bad end (which meant dying, because after all, it's easier to be weepy over a dead victim than one who's alive and embarrassing everyone). In any case, Fielding wrote Joseph Andrews as a parody of these stories: instead of a servant girl pursued by a lord, he has a young man pursued by a lady; and instead of the Richardson-style melodrama, he has absurd and comic situations, poking fun at the convoluted plots of his rival authors. Readers of Joseph Andrews would have had a good laugh not just at the absurd situations, but at the clever parody of currently popular novels.

Now fast-forward to the present day. The context for the parody has long since disappeared, which robs Joseph Andrews of a substantial part of its amusement value; if (like me) you're not a big fan of 18th-century bodice rippers, a lot of the story seems rather silly and pointless. So the story has to survive on what's left. And clearly it appeals to some section of the audience: if you like farce and broad comedy, you will likely find amusement in the misadventures of young Joseph and the clumsy seductions of Lady Booby.

But for me, it just doesn't work. Joseph Andrews is an odd amalgamation of melodrama and comedy, and the two just don't go well together. If the comedy were developed beyond the crude physical level... or if the melodrama were taken seriously rather than tongue-in-cheek... then the film might hold together better. As it is, I find it to be rather tiresomely silly, and that's about it. In truth, though, it really is a faithful adaptation, so if you happen to adore the original novel, you'll undoubtedly like the film.

The DVD

Video

Joseph Andrews is presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer, at the film's original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Considering that the film is more than 25 years old, it looks reasonably good. On the whole, it's clean and bright-looking; only in certain indoor scenes with dim lighting does it take on the brownish patina that seems to haunt films from the 1970s. A moderate amount of grain appears in the image, and some edge enhancement, with the result that close-up scenes look good but more distant shots are soft and a bit blurry. It's a quite watchable transfer, though, and I'd say that it has most likely seen some cleaning up.

Audio

The soundtrack for Joseph Andrews is an adequate Dolby 2.0 mono track. The dialogue is generally clear and easily understandable, and the overall sound is natural and clean. There are some issues with the volume levels, though: it's necessary to crank it up fairly high to get the dialogue to a normal volume level, and then the music tends to be excessively loud. In a few scenes, the balance between the music and the dialogue is also poorly handled, so that the dialogue is obscured by the overly prominent background music.

Extras

There are no special features on this DVD.

Final thoughts

If you enjoy farce and broad, bawdy comedy, Joseph Andrews may be the movie for you. It's a faithful adaptation of Henry Fielding's original 18th-century novel, to be sure; but since I found the novel to be silly and pointless out of the context of the contemporary bodice-rippers that it was parodying, that's not saying much. Rent it if you're interested.