When wealthy bachelor Mr. Bingley (SIMON WOODS) moves into a nearby mansion with his snooty sister Caroline (KELLY REILLY) and good friend Mr. Darcy (MATTHEW MACFAYDEN), the Bennett girls are all in a tizzy, including the shy Jane who would seem to be first in line for Mr. Bingley should he choose her.

But then there's Elizabeth who isn't remotely impressed by the overall notion, let alone Darcy who she believes to be arrogant and self-involved. She certainly has no interest in Mr. Collins (TOM HOLLANDER), her distant and less than dashing cousin who will inherit her father's estate and is looking for a wife to accompany him.

Instead, she's more interested in military man Mr. Wickham (RUPERT FRIEND), if only because he also has a dislike for Darcy stemming from an incident in their past. With the passage of time and various revelations, however, her opinion toward Darcy wavers, including after she meets his snobbish and powerful aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourg (JUDI DENCH) who looks down on Elizabeth and any potential romance between the free-spirited young woman and her nephew.

Maybe it's the accent. In her new venture, the latest incarnation of "Pride & Prejudice," the accent doesn't even stand out. This even as Joe Wright's film, punctuated with tinkly piano fills and golden-lit, wholly stroll-enticing fields, is occasionally bogged down in reverence for its familiar source material.

Knightley is well suited to play Elizabeth Bennet, famously self-directed and stubborn, an "independent woman" a century before Destiny's Child named the type. Being so ahead of her time, Elizabeth is terribly attractive. Still, she's stuck in her time, assigned by temperament to look after her four sisters, tolerate her mother (Brenda Blethyn), and dote on her daddy (Donald Sutherland). She's also destined to love the man who seems so annoying to her on first sight, the utterly uninteresting Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen, so not Colin Firth).

They meet at a meet-and-greet ball near her family home, Darcy being a guest of the well-heeled, if bumbling Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) and his preposterous sister Caroline (Kelly Reilly). Their arrival in town sets the Bennet girls -- especially the bubbly Mrs. (Brenda Blethyn) -- into a tizzy, as they're all looking for wealthy husbands, especially since their own, respectable but small family estate is set to be inherited by the nearest male heir, Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander). As the rest of the partiers frolic and giggle (and girls do a lot of giggling here, especially irritating Bennet teens Lydia [Jenna Malone] and Kitty [Carey Mulligan]), Darcy and Elizabeth exchange dagger-filled looks.

Thus begins the usual Austen pairing off, designated couples defined, divided, and brought back together. Upright sort Bingley ("I'm not a big reader, I prefer being out of doors") falls for Elizabeth's bland sister Jane (Rosamund Pike, revived from her stint in "Doom"), and Darcy starts squabbling with Elizabeth.

He broods and grumps, she's given to pensive rhapsodies, twisting round and round on a rope swing in the family barn, the image slowed down to make sure you note her daunting loveliness. Darcy certainly does -- again and again, even as he does his best to resist, by damning the locals ("I find the country perfectly adequate") and convincing Bingley to abandon Jane (as the Bennets, save for the refined Elizabeth and reserved Jane, do tend to betray their middle-classness in gaudy behaviors).

Though their volatile romance is the basis for Austen's class critique, it is a romance, and Elizabeth must come to realize not only that she is attracted to this difficult fellow but also that he's generous and tender, perfectly adequate boyfriend material, and only a bit oppressed by his own relative, the ferocious Lady Catherine (Judi Dench).

When she makes a late night visit to the Bennets to warn Elizabeth to keep away from her nephew, the younger woman takes this as a challenge on two fronts. One, she's just now learned that Darcy actually "likes" her (in high school fashion), and two, she now has a more formidable force to fight in the awesome shape of Lady Catherine, puffed up to a kind of regal self-assuredness.

And so the film establishes the ideal couple by setting then against conventionally imperfect others. Elizabeth's pride looks almost worthy in comparison to the too-loud Mrs. Bennet, rebellious Lydia, arrogant Caroline, and her unhappily married best friend Charlotte (Claudie Blakley); while Darcy's dullness looks strangely dynamic compared to weasel-like Mr. Collins and malleable Bingley.

The only character who seems remotely healthy -- and at ease with that health -- is Mr. Bennet. And he's bearing up under the burden of "knowing" that in producing five daughters, he has left them vulnerable to the vagaries of the marriage system by not providing them with an estate and fancy name.

That Elizabeth never sees past this system, only gets "around it" by falling in love with her moneyed, much desired object, is only one of several disappointments. Most of these have to do with that tinkly piano, along with other art-house type short-hands, the rain on the heath, and the letter-writer's voiceover to reveal events or "feelings."

Worse, the movie cuts and runs on the question of marriage, lapsing at last into mushy, familiar sentiment that only makes the 127-minute film seem too long and also, too easy. All this bears down hard on golden girl Keira Knightley. But she can take it. She's surely brilliant and talented and adept at delivering this sort of self-obsessing dialogue and -- no small thing -- inviting you to love her for (or in spite of) it. Though for the moment she remains most divine when she's swashing and buckling, she's got that thing. "Pride & Prejudice" rates as a 5.5 out of 10.