One might be forgiven for thinking that there’s something familiar about “Becoming Jane;” the engagingly eager-to-please film that aims to do for Jane Austen what a cross-dressing Gwyneth Patrow did for Shakespeare: explain exactly how a biographically unexceptional author managed to produce an exceptional body of work. As the author of six novels treasured for biting social commentary and finely wrought romantic entanglements, Austen also died at the age of 41 without ever having wed.

In “Becoming Jane,” though, it is 1795, and twenty-year-old Jane is ripe for a love affair earth-shaking enough to inspire a manuscript titled “First Impressions” — which will eventually become the novel that the film’s target demographic will recognize as the inspiration for an awfully similar 2005 production called “Pride and Prejudice.”

Despite its dependence on literary cannibalism, “Becoming Jane” is an affecting, if slightly formulaic, love story in its own right. Directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams, the film is based on passing references in Austen’s correspondence with her sister of her brief flirtation with a young Irish lawyer named Tom Lefroy. From there, “Becoming Jane” draws on tried and true variations of Austen novels to create the necessary ingredients for a successful period romantic comedy.

Young Jane (Anne Hathaway, appropriately doe-eyed and spunky by turns) finds her prospects limited by inheritance laws and dreams of scratching out a living for herself with her pen, despite others’ efforts to marry her off to the socially awkward nephew of the local grand dame (Maggie Smith). But her life — and writing, apparently — gets much more interesting when the dashing and unsuitable Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), disrupts her quiet country existence with fast city manners, an intellectual new reading list and attractive emotional baggage. One tumultuous affair later, crammed with Austenian plot devices that include Money, Not Enough of and Relatives, Disapproving, Jane emerges from the experience having loved and lost — and armed with an interesting new idea for a novel. She has, the filmmakers would like you to believe, Become Jane.

Unfortunately, this implication strikes the only sour note in an otherwise sparkling production. Even nuanced performances by a roundly stellar cast don’t disguise the film’s suggestion that in addition to the plot for one of her novels, Austen’s actual skill as a writer is owed in part to a young man who criticizes her writing and introduces her to real literature. To its credit, the press coverage for “Becoming Jane” makes no claims to historical accuracy. But it’s difficult to wholly embrace a film that shortchanges the author it tries to celebrate — which is a shame, because the film’s laudatory intentions are clear enough in its obvious and loving attention to detail. If the heroine were only anyone other than Jane Austen herself, “Becoming Jane” would have been a film any Austen adaptation could aspire to.