I love movies about writers. I’m a sucker for them. I see all of them, the very good ones and the very bad ones. So naturally, I had to watch Miss Potter, about Beatrix Potter, who wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other books. I read all her books when I was little–in fact, the first book I ever read was about Peter Rabbit. The Tale of Two Bad Mice is my favorite.

Potter was a fascinating person. On top of her children’s books, she was an avid scientist. She even attempted to enter the Royal Botanical Gardens but was rejected because she was a woman. Later, she was the first to observe that lichens are a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae and became a respected mycologist throughout England. Her books were best sellers, and in later life, she became a conservationist, saving thousands of acres in the Lake District.

When I was a kid, my Mom told me how Potter would draw the wildlife around her, and I imagined a young girl-scientist drawing her pets (Peter Rabbit was based on her pet bunny) with a scientific eye, and sitting in nature watching the smallest insect with intelligent curiosity. I imitated this, drawing my cockatiel Jiggsy and dog Macs and sitting outside to “observe” nature, which really meant reading books and singing to myself. Potter probably started my fantasy about being a biologist in the late 19th century.

And then Hollywood gets a hold of the story.

First off, the movie makes no mention of her scientific efforts–no microscopes, no slides, no shots of Renee Zellweger staring at something in a scientific way, nothing. Instead, Beatrix Potter is a silly woman, even a little deranged. Not only does she call her drawings of rabbits and hedgehogs her friends–which is a little precious but acceptable given what she does for a living–she also talks to her drawings. Aloud. In front of people. “You stop that and behave!” she says to a drawing of a duck hanging on the wall… in front of her business acquaintance. She seems kind of crazy, frankly.

According to the movie, Potter’s biggest problem as a Victorian woman isn’t her thwarted desire to be a scientist, or her attempt to publish books–the movie makes that look pretty easy–but her desire to marry a tradesman when she comes from upper-class people. To be fair, this was an issue in the real Beatrix Potter’s life, and it makes sense to draw from it for the script, but not at the detriment of all those other, bigger issues. The movie does nod to Potter’s conservationist efforts in the end, but without the background in science, her attempts to save land comes off like self-righteousness or worse, modern-day environmentalism.

It’s not that I want Hollywood to make a feminist movie about Beatrix Potter. That wouldn’t be anymore appropriate than making her into an environmentalist. I just thought the movie made her look like a silly nitwit who likes to draw pretty pictures, not the clever exacting thinker that she apparently was. On top of that, the movie tries too hard to be witty, so all the jokes felt cutesy and off to me.

And while we’re at it, what is the deal with Renée Zellweger? I like her well enough, but I’ve never seen her do anything as an actress to warrant the A-List status she has. What’s up Hollywood? Are her English accents really that great?