Publisher Mills & Boon was referenced in more than one review, with the Sun’s Dulcie Pearce suggesting, external the film had replaced chunks of Brontë book with pages from the romance novels.
“This over-stylised drama is fierce and fun – but unfortunately it is also sex over substance,” Pearce wrote.
Clarisse Loughrey of the Independent, external gave the film just one star, writing: “Emerald Fennell’s astonishingly bad adaptation is like a limp Mills & Boon.
“Robbie and Elordi’s performances are almost pushed to the border of pantomime, while Fennell’s provocations seem to define the poor as sexual deviants and the rich as clueless prudes.”
Other critics were more flattering, with the Financial Times’s Danny Leigh giving it three stars, external.
“As the sexual tension cranks, the mood feels like an arthouse Carry On, with lingering shots of gloopy egg whites,” he wrote.
“The rest of the movie grabs the attention so hard, Charli XCX does the soundtrack and you don’t even notice.”
Leigh wasn’t the only critic to compare Wuthering Heights to a Carry On film.
In a three-star review, the Irish Times’s Donald Clarke noted, external that “the surprise for many will be how closely this supposed deconstruction sticks to the shape of Emily Brontë’s original narrative”.
He pointed out that the opening scene was “closer to Carry on Heathcliff than The 120 Days of Sodom”.
There was another three-star review from Empire’s Beth Webb, external, who described the film as “undeniably expertly crafted”.
“Fennell throws everything at this fever-dream adaptation, which massages the senses while showcasing Elordi’s ever-growing star power,” she said. “If only its electrically erotic energy was sustained to the end.”