Well, I finally saw Bright Star last night! My brother Dan, my sister-in-law Molly, and my friends Connie and Marcy went with me. After the movie, I polled most of them as to what grade they would give the movie (Marcy said she loved the movie, but had to leave before I could get her rating). Dan= A-, Molly= A, Connie, B+, and as for myself, I granted it a B+ also.
So, within our group at least, the movie was successful

Some of my thoughts in no particular order: (And there may be spoilers here. . .but I don't think any of them is earth-shattering or movie-ruining, though.)
I was pleasantly surprised that Keats (especially at the start of the film) had a sense of humor and a sense of fun. I'm so glad they include this in the film! I thought he might be a "wilting flower" the whole movie, but thankfully he wasn't.
Even though I know the movie was from Fanny's perspective, I thought Keats was the *one* character who remained a kind of enigma. It was often hard to read his thoughts. We understood Fanny's and even Brown's feelings very well, but Keats wasn't often as easy to read. Whishaw plays him "close to the vest" and most of the time, Keats either comes off being either seen as extremely reserved or perhaps even uninterested--which he obviously wasn't, so I interpreted his character to be very reserved on the surface with his passionate emotions residing deeper within. He's a man struggling, I think, for supreme control over himself and a situation, namely his illness and impossible love affair, over which he has very little control. There is an aspect of that "struggle" in the real Keats--especially toward the end of his life--and so I didn't think it was so completely foreign a way to approach his character. However, I would have liked to have seen a few more scenes with more emotional display.
I also noticed the kind of pure, ethereal quality that
Campion wanted to display in Keats--there is one little scene between Brown and Keats in particular (pertaining to the maid Abigail). Keats is portrayed, I think, as kind of. . .well, virginal--and a little "dense" when it comes to the things like masters sleeping with their maids

I like the fact that George and Fanny Keats are mentioned in the movie (in passing)--but they do *exist* in this story.
Campion does a good job of being true to history when it came to things such as Keats's family history, the fact that he studied medicine, the savage reviews of his work, etc. Many of these things are mentioned in passing, but I am glad that they *were* mentioned rather than saying that Keats only had one brother, Tom, who is the only sibling who actually has a scene in the movie.
Paul Schneider's Brown was a great leavening in the movie. Much of the time, he's a misogynist buffoon of sorts, but it really suits the way the character is written and works well in the story.
We see several of the Keats circle in this movie and anyone who knows about Keats would be able to pick most of them out. However, many of them are unnamed and I kept wondering "is that guy supposed to be Hunt or Haslam?"
The cinematography was fabulous and Keats's poems were woven into the storyline seamlessly--it didn't seem out of place at all for someone to start reciting some of his lines. The dialog, the way the characters moved and behaved was refreshingly natural. This movie didn't feel at all like a "period" film in the traditional sense. Their clothing looked lived in, not like they just whipped their costumes off of a mannequin from some museum.
There were a few scenes that particularly struck me as great, but I don't want to reveal too much, so I will leave out the details. I will say that one of them is when Keats has his first blood spitting attack--all of that night is seen from Fanny's POV and I thought it was well done--any kind of melodrama was expertly avoided and we very much get a sense of the pain and sense of helplessness that Fanny feels.
While I was watching the movie, I surveyed the audience to see what kind of reaction they were giving the movie. One guy sitting next to me kept releasing these great heaving sighs--as if he was so bored he'd forget to breathe unless he sighed. Most people seemed really engaged, especially during the humorous moments--there was a lot of laughter! And during the most tragic moments, you could hear a pin drop. I remember hearing one person sniffing through nearly half the movie. At first I thought, "wow, someone is really touched by the movie" and after a while, I could hardly believe someone could be teary-eyed through so much of the film and I assumed that the person had an allergy or something. Toward the end, the sniffing got louder and I could tell this person was crying his or her eyes out! After the movie ended, I turned around to see who the sniffer was and it was my sister-in-law Molly! Her face was completely red from crying. We all had a kind of laugh about it, because Molly is an extremely intuitive person who easily feels others' emotions--and she sure felt Fanny's!
Anyway, all said and done it is a good movie. I would have done many things differently, but that doesn't mean this movie did everything *wrong*. I think my biggest "problem" with it was that Keats didn't have the depth, in my mind, that either Fanny or Brown had. He was a little too "pure" for me. But I guess that's the director putting a great poet on a bit of a pedestal. Mind you, Whishaw is a fantastic actor and did what he could with what he was given.