Obsessive reading of Jane Austen may seem to be the surest way to ensure a life of solitude, but in “The Jane Austen Book Club,” it’s the quickest route to marital bliss.

The film, about a group of single or soon-to-be-single friends who assemble a book club to analyze Austen’s six novels and learn their own life lessons along the way, is a comedy of manners and mating seeking to honor the author’s most popular works. It seems all the ladies are in need of a little help. Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) needs consoling to get through her divorce; Elder stateswoman Bernadette (Kathy Baker) has brought the prudish Prudie (Emily Blunt) in to distract the young high school teacher from her own marital troubles; Sylvia’s beautiful lesbian daughter, Allegra (Maggie Grace), has joined to help out mom while figuring out her own relationship; and Sylvia’s best friend, Jocelyn (Maria Bello), has organized the group and offers Sylvia and the audience eye candy in the shape of Hugh Dancy’s Grigg, the final member of their group.

Grigg and Sylvia are naturally a non-match, but the plot depends on Jocelyn being the last one to notice. Ms. Bello has the beauty and skill with a prickly disposition to pay one of Austen’s most selfsatisfied heroines, but without the cultural strictures that Austen’s characters were constantly struggling with, her reticence in realizing Grigg’s value makes her look a bit dim.

Jocelyn declares at one point: “I read once that the ‘Emma’ plot, the humbling of a pretty, self-satisfied girl, is the most popular of all time.” And so the theme for the film follows that line.

But the women are tackling all of Austen’s novels, so other themes come into play. Sylvia and her husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits) are trying to find out what happens after the happy Austen ending of wedding bliss. The same goes for Prudie, who gets screen time with a student (Kevin Zegers) of hers whom she contemplates sleeping with, legitimized only by the fact that the actor who plays him would have had to be held back a few years to still be in high school.

But aside from a few moments of intrigue, the weight of the film lies in the dialogue, though Robin Swicord, who adapted the screenplay from the book by Karen Joy Fowler, relies on Austen’s prose more than she does in developing her own bon mots.

Unlike 2001’s “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” which managed to subsume some of Austen’s themes into a telling modern-day relationship drama, “The Jane Austen Book Club” fails to make a case for bringing Austen’s comedy of manners into the modern era. Fighting with and against the social pressures of 19th-century England is half the fun of Austen, but here the biggest social battle comes in the form of Allegra’s lesbianism, which is met with no resistance at all. And Austen’s plots might have been predictable, but her writing was never bland.

The author often gets a bad rap in the film versions of her books for being hidden behind bad English accents and period costumes, but a relationship drama set against a backdrop of Starbucks and indoor rock climbing lacks luster. The women’s homes are beautiful and their clothes quirkily romantic, but the excitement in Austen that is brought on by the consequences of a bad marriage is distinctly lacking.

On the whole, the cast does an able job with the script. Though varying in ages, the women are universally pretty. None fail to deliver their characters, though Ms. Bello, Ms. Blunt, and Ms. Baker’s characters are relied upon for personality. The film has its share of sweet scenes, and audience members looking for a light distraction can easily forgive the inevitability of the plot.

The film is full of plesant faces to counter the coffee klatch aesthetic. Though the cast is comprised of women of varying age, the only sex scenes involve young lesbians — perhaps a nod to the men who will inevitably be dragged into the audience. And the men are handsome enticements for their respective demographics. Mr. Dancy delivers his share of aesthetic pleasure to the heavily female-focused story line, but he’s defenseless against the task of portraying the sort of passive man who exists solely in the realm of chick flicks, while Mr. Smits is given the thankless job of playing the same sort of man — who cheats.

Though “The Jane Austen Book Club” does its best to pay homage to the works of its namesake, it seems more enjoyable to listen to Austen’s words spoken by her characters rather than recited in awe by her devotees.