There is a ghost hovering over this big-screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. This ghost is a man in white. He is wet. He drips. He smoulders. He oozes. He is, of course, Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, in the 1995 television adaptation directed by Simon Langton. The sight of Firth emerging from a lake was, for many women, the equi-valent of the first time male viewers saw Ursula Andress coming out of the sea in Dr No.

This new version — the first serious film of the book in 65 years — has no hot moment. No ooze. No aaaahs. No tight britches, firm male buttocks or heaving bosoms. This is a sexless Austen adaptation played for laughs and love, so please leave your libido at the cinema door.

You might say that it’s unfair to compare the new Pride & Prejudice with Langton’s television version. But unless you can better that one or do something totally new, why bother making this frequently told tale yet again? And God knows its maker, Working Title Films, has milked Austen’s story enough times in the Bridget Jones films. The director, Joe Wright (this is his first big feature film), has said that he wanted to take a new approach: “I wanted to make Pride & Prejudice real and gritty.” Hmm. I doubt “real” and “gritty” are the first words that spring to mind on seeing this film.

His film opens with the sweet sound of birdsong at dawn. A lazy sun arises above a green and pleasant countryside. Piano tinkle falls like morning dew as the beautiful Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) makes her way home. It all looks and sounds like a wonderful advert for Classic FM.

Now, you would think that in a “real” and “gritty” drama, the messy bits of real life would intrude. The Bennet family lives surrounded by livestock, and our heroine loves to walk through the countryside in all weathers, yet she never has so much as a speck of mud on that immaculate face of hers.

Okay, so this isn’t the Regency equivalent of Trainspotting. But neither is it fair to dismiss Pride & Prejudice as just another English heritage film. Yes, it has pretty pictures and, at times, Wright slips into a cosy, Constable-like view of the English countryside. But the focus of the film is not on the scenery or the charms of its costumes; it’s a complex and multilayered tale of love and loathing, desire and duty, class and character.

The success or failure of Pride & Prejudice ultimately rests on Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen (as Mr Darcy). The casting of Knightley is questionable. Nobody can deny that she is blessed with a very pretty face, but she has been cursed with a disfiguring smile that, on display, makes you think of Tony Blair. In fact, she’s too pretty to play Elizabeth Bennet. Her sister Jane (Rosamund Pike), who falls for Darcy’s friend, Mr Bingley (Simon Woods), is meant to be the Bennet beauty. But Knightley’s face can’t be beat. So, when Darcy first sees her and says to Bingley “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me”, it doesn’t sound plausible.

The real problem is that Knightley is not a great actress; she is merely the hot actress of the moment. She can convey the feistiness of the defiant Elizabeth well enough, but there’s no emotional depth to her performance. There’s no sense of real inward battle going on between her love and her loathing for Darcy.

As for this Darcy, it’s hard to know what a girl like Elizabeth would see in him. He’s not that good-looking. If Firth’s Darcy was pure sex, Macfadyen’s Darcy is pure sulk. He lacks the cold, contemptuous arrogance that would make Elizabeth — and us — hate him.

Macfadyen is very good, though, when it comes to the difficult task of declaring his love for Elizabeth. He manages to bumble and fumble without being Hugh Grant.

The central flaw of the film is that it doesn’t do justice to the social issue at the heart of Austen’s story. The challenge is to make clear to a modern audience the terrible fate of women in Austen’s time who did not make a suitable marriage. The one character who cares about the Bennet girls getting married is their scheming mother (Brenda Blethyn), and she is portrayed as a silly and socially ambitious woman who is a slave to her nerves. The only time the film gets serious about the plight of women is when Lizzie’s good friend Charlotte (Claudie Blakley) explains that she didn’t have the luxury of refusing an offer of marriage from the dreadful Mr Collins (Tom Hollander).

Wright’s Pride & Prejudice is not an inspired or innovative film. It’s a well-crafted work that is convivial and, if your expectations are low, surprisingly enjoyable. It has some nice comic moments and an excellent supporting cast (Hollander is quite brilliant as the social-climbing clergyman Collins). But I suspect that this likeable Pride & Prejudice will remain in the shadow of its small-screen predecessor, for that’s the one people will still love.

Pride & Prejudice, U, 127 mins
Three stars