--- title: "Great Expectations" year: 1998 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/great-expectations-1998" fi1m_score: 62 critics_score: 58 critics_reviews: 9 published: "2026-09-20T09:13:36.218978+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T09:13:36.503784+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Great Expectations (1998) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón · 1h 51m · MPA R · Comedy, Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 62** · Critics 58 from 9 reviews *In a sentence:* Dickens moved to Florida, dressed head to toe in green, and told to gaze at Gwyneth Paltrow until something happens > Alfonso Cuarón moves Dickens to Florida and Manhattan and paints it green. It is lovely to look at, Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro give it a pulse, and the romance at its centre never once explains why anyone should want anyone. ## Synopsis The Gulf Coast of Florida. Finnegan Bell (Jeremy James Kissner), ten years old, an orphan raised by his sister’s boyfriend Joe (Chris Cooper), a fisherman, is wading in the shallows when an escaped convict (Robert De Niro) rises out of the water and demands his help. Soon afterwards he is summoned to Paradiso Perduto, the rotting mansion of Ms. Dinsmoor (Anne Bancroft), a rich recluse, to be a playmate for her niece Estella (Raquel Beaudene). Finn draws; Estella watches him do it. Years pass. The grown Finn (Ethan Hawke) still fishes with Joe and still draws Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow), who treats him with amused contempt. Then a lawyer, Jerry Ragno (Josh Mostel), arrives with news: an anonymous patron will pay for Finn to move to New York and show his work in a gallery. ## Review Alfonso Cuarón’s [*Great Expectations*](https://film.one/film/great-expectations) takes the Charles Dickens novel out of the marshes, puts it on the Gulf Coast of Florida, sends it on to New York and renames Pip Finnegan Bell. Mitch Glazer’s screenplay keeps the bones: the boy, the convict, the mad rich woman, the cold girl, the mysterious benefactor. It drops nearly everything the bones were holding up. What is left is a film that is a pleasure to look at for 111 minutes and that we could not, in the end, make ourselves care about. The look first, because it is the reason to see it. Emmanuel Lubezki shoots almost every frame with green in it: the water, Estella’s dresses, the peeling walls of Ms. Dinsmoor’s mansion, the paint on Finn’s hands. Tony Burrough’s Paradiso Perduto is a coastal pile with the garden grown in through the windows and a fountain full of leaves, and the New York apartments are white and bare by contrast, so we know Finn has arrived nowhere in particular. Judianna Makovsky puts Paltrow in fitted green and puts Bancroft in the wardrobe of a woman who has not bought anything new in decades and still dresses for dinner. It is a coherent, deliberate world, and Cuarón moves the camera through it slowly enough to let us live in it. Bancroft is the film’s great turn. Ms. Dinsmoor smokes, dances alone to old records in her ruined ballroom, and speaks to the ten-year-old Finn (Jeremy James Kissner) as though he were a grown man who had already let her down. She is funny and frightening in the same breath and she never asks for sympathy. De Niro, as the convict Finn finds in the shallows in the first ten minutes, has only a handful of scenes and makes each one count; whenever he is on screen the film has tension, and whenever he is not it has scenery. Chris Cooper plays Joe, the fisherman who raises Finn, with a plain decency the film does not know what to do with. The problem is the lovers. Hawke’s Finn is a man things happen to. He draws, he wants Estella, he is given money and a gallery, and at no point does he decide anything. Hawke plays it soft-voiced and slightly hurt, and there is nothing behind the hurt. Paltrow’s Estella is asked to be cruel and desirable and nothing else, and she does both, but Glazer never gives her a reason to keep returning to a man she plainly holds in contempt, or him a reason to keep letting her. The kiss at the fountain between the children is the best scene the two characters share, and they are ten. We wanted to be swept up. The film is built to sweep, all green light and Patrick Doyle’s strings rising every time Estella walks into a room, and around the hour mark we noticed we were admiring the wallpaper while two beautiful people stared at each other. Then we were faintly annoyed, because all the pieces of a real film were there and nobody was assembling them. Doyle’s score works hardest exactly where the writing works least, and you can hear the strain. Steven Weisberg cuts the Florida childhood with a dreamy looseness that suits it and the New York half with the same looseness, which does not; the gallery scenes drift. Dickens’s Pip learns that he has been ashamed of the wrong people, and Joe is where that lesson lands. Glazer keeps Joe and forgets what he is for. When the fisherman turns up in the city, Finn is embarrassed, and the film is embarrassed with him rather than by him. Without that turn the story is a boy who fancies a girl and gets rich. Hank Azaria’s Walter Plane, the rival for Estella, is given so little to do that he registers as a rumour. Most critics have split down the middle on this one, and we can see both halves. David Lean’s 1946 film found the marshes frightening; Cuarón finds the Gulf beautiful, and that is the trade he has made. See it for Bancroft, for the colour, and for De Niro coming up out of the water. Watch it at home, where the greens hold and the longing takes up less of the evening. It carries a 15 certificate. *Fi1m score 62, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews split almost down the middle, with nothing in between: five critics like Cuarón’s modern-dress Dickens and four do not. What they agree on is the look. Nearly every review, warm or cold, praises the voluptuous visual style and finds the move to 1970s Florida and 1980s New York convincingly done. De Niro’s Magwitch figure earns praise from admirers and detractors alike, as does Anne Bancroft. The reservations cluster around what the update leaves behind. The detractors say the film narrows the story to the romance and the stars and loses the novel’s lessons about loyalty and growing up, so that it ends up stranded between its two periods. Variety finds it a talented curiosity short on dramatic tension; Empire thinks Hawke’s lead is weak; The New Yorker prefers David Lean’s 1946 film. Notably, the warmest notices come from critics revisiting the film years on, while the reviews from its release run cooler. ### Reviews we read (9) - **The AV Club**, Sam Adams (80/100, inferred): The critic highlights Cuarón’s boldly sensual, contemporary reimagining of Dickens, which is bright, sunny, and openly erotic in ways that diverge sharply from Anglo-Saxon traditions and prior adaptations. They single out the film’s consistent creation and subversion of expectations, along with strong performances such as Robert De Niro’s complex Magwitch figure. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/alfonso-cuaron-puts-a-steamy-spin-on-great-expectations-1798238029) - **The Telegraph** (80/100, inferred): The critic calls the Cuarón film a bold, sexy and vibrant modern take on Dickens that stands out as one of the most thrilling screen versions, with a witty, poignant script, superb cast and a fascinating central romance between Hawke and Paltrow. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/great-expectations-gwyneth-paltrow-ethan-hawke-dickens/) - **Time Out**, GA (80/100, inferred): The critic finds Cuarón's modernized adaptation stylish, sexy, involving and great fun. They single out the effective transposition of the story to 1970s Florida and 1980s New York for evoking the themes of innocence and experience. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/great-expectations-1) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (70/100, inferred): The film begins as a great movie but ends as only a good one, limited by its focus on the romantic line rather than broader coming-of-age elements. It is visually enchanted thanks to the cinematography, with strong performances and a successful modern translation of the source material. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-expectations-1998) - **The New York Times**, Janet Maslin (70/100, inferred): The pop overhaul of the Dickens story is bold and vulgar but often works due to the director's voluptuous visual style, creating wonder even when wilder ideas misfire. It makes up in visual exoticism what it loses in character and context. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/30/movies/film-review-tale-of-two-stories-this-one-with-a-ms.html) - **Empire**, Angie Errigo (40/100, inferred): The film is a well-meaning but unsuccessful reworking of Dickens that fails to capture the story's point despite strong visual style and supporting turns from De Niro and Bancroft. Hawke's lead performance is weak and the narrative lacks emotional engagement. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/great-expectations-review/) - **The New Yorker** (40/100, inferred): The piece contrasts the film's novelization with Dickens' original, noting how the modern Florida update jettisons the novel's ready-made iconography in favor of disco rhythms and contemporary details. It highlights the accuracy and intensity of David Lean's 1946 adaptation as superior. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/02/09/picture-books) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (30/100, inferred): The update convincingly moves the story to Florida and New York with lush visuals, but suffers from being neither here nor there, losing the spark of the original by overemphasizing romance and stars at the expense of loyalty, maturity and life lessons. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jan-30-ca-13489-story.html) - **Variety**, Todd McCarthy (30/100, inferred): This fanciful modern adaptation lacks the emotional depth and dramatic tension needed to command attention beyond a talented curiosity, despite memorable images and vividly realized scenes. The pared-down narrative and opaque effect make it strangely lacking in resonance. [Read](https://variety.com/1998/film/reviews/great-expectations-6-1117436765/) ## Details - **Director:** Alfonso Cuarón - **Director:** Alfonso Cuarón - **Screenplay:** Mitch Glazer - **Novel:** Charles Dickens - **Cinematography:** Emmanuel Lubezki - **Editor:** Steven Weisberg - **Music:** Patrick Doyle - **Production design:** Tony Burrough - **Costume design:** Judianna Makovsky - **Producer:** Art Linson - **Cast:** Ethan Hawke as Finnegan Bell; Gwyneth Paltrow as Estella; Hank Azaria as Walter Plane; Chris Cooper as Joe; Anne Bancroft as Ms. Dinsmoor; Robert De Niro as Prisoner / Lustig; Josh Mostel as Jerry Ragno; Kim Dickens as Maggie - **Runtime:** 1h 51m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 30 January 1998 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Romance - **Budget:** $25 million - **Box office:** $55 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy0hc1_4yiI ## Where to watch in the US - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AE, AT, AU, BE, BG, CA, CH, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, IE, IL, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, NL, NO, NZ, PL, PT, SE, SG, UA, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Great Expectations* (1946), Fi1m 84: David Lean’s version, where the marshes are cold and the lesson still lands — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/great-expectations.md) - *Y Tu Mamá También* (2001), Fi1m 87: Cuarón and Lubezki again, this time with people worth following down the road — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/y-tu-mama-tambien.md) - *The Go-Between* (1971): A boy, a rich girl, a hot summer, and class doing the damage quietly - *Romeo + Juliet* (1996), Fi1m 82: The other modern-dress classic of the decade, louder and far more certain of itself — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/romeo-juliet.md) - *The Talented Mr Ripley* (1999), Fi1m 80: An outsider wants what the rich have, and the film knows exactly why — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-talented-mr-ripley.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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