I’m hard-pressed to think of a big screen version of Jane Austen’s “Emma” that I didn’t adore. I loved “Clueless” and fell wholly into “It” girl Anya Taylor-Joy’s take on the character a couple of years back, “emma.”

The TV adaptations don’t have the pace that suits the material. Whatever the virtues of stretching the bigger story arc and harder-won romance of “Pride & Prejudice” out over several TV episodes, “Emma” is too compact, quippy and quick to endure the longer BBC/PBS et al versions. It’s a lovely surface gloss on Austen and a classic romantic comedy, designed to throw obstacles in front of the couple who cannot see themselves as a couple until they do, with a quick wedding making the finest rom-com finale.

“Emma” seems by design, to be consumed, savored and delighted-in over a single sitting.

For me, the gold standard for this frothiest of Austens is the 1996 Miramax Oscar-bait adapted by Douglas McGrath. He was, for a spell, Woody Allen’s screenwriting collaborator, and only got to write and direct and handful of films himself before his untimely death last year at 64. But “Infamous,” “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Emma” are timeless delights. He co-scripted Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway,” a genuine all-star romp that holds up better than any of Allen’s post “Annie Hall” comedies, including the much-praised “Midnight in Paris.”

When McGrath weighed-in during the cinema’s “Jane Austen Mania” of the ’90s, he made damned sure he found the laughs and he was blessed with a gloriously winsome, coquettish and somewhat “clueless” Emma for the ages, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Yes, she was a “nepo baby” decades before the term caught on. She endured years of whispers about why Harvey Weinstein of Miramax championed her before coming forward and damning him. And while her years as Marvel fanboys’ punching bag were undeserved, her bursts of entitlement and Goop ditziness have made her a more understandable object of fun and resentment in recent years.

But before all that, before the Oscar-winning confection “Shakespeare in Love,” Paltrow was dewy, birdlike innocence, in over her head as Emma Woodhouse, a 21 year-old behind-the-scenes matchmaker for scenic, tony Highbury, a pastoral suburb of Napoleonic Wars era London.

“What is the point of me being almost 22” if it is not to share her worldly wise thoughts of “a perfect match” among her infereriors um peers?

She claims credit for the nuptials of her governness (Greta Scacchi) to the gentlemanly widower Mr. Weston (James Cosmo). She is determined to duplicate her success, no matter what her old “dear friend” might advise.

 “Vanity working on a weak mind produces every kind of mischief,” he warns.

A “new girl,” the innocent Harriet Smith (Toni Collette, radiantly naive) falls under Emma’s influence, and Emma insists Harriet can do much better than the age-appropriate farmer who loves her. Perhaps The Reverend Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming), or the dashing newcomer that everyone has been talking about long before he arrives, Frank Churchill (Ewan McGregor)?

Might a demonstrative moment of kindness from Emma’s older “dear friend” since childhood, Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam, one of Colin Firth’s few real rivals in period romances) hint at an interest?

Harriet may think so, but the latter two kind of feel like Emma’s would-be suitors, at least in the matchmaker’s eyes. After all, she has a grand “meet cute” with Frank — her carriage is stuck in the stream, and he’s seemingly reluctant to help.

“Is your horse just washing his feet or are the darker forces at work here?”

As witty as it is, the main reason the 1996 “Emma” scores over all challengers is that cast, which includes the vipress without peer Juliet Stevenson as the new snob in town, Sophie Thompson as the dithering chatterbox Miss Bates, Phyllida Law as her long-suffering, mostly-silent mother and Polly Walker as another beauty introduced to the social mix of Highbury, and a possible rival to Emma.

Paltrow and McGrath’s interpretation of the character and recreation of the mores of the time are spot-on. This is an “Emma” of her era — young, privileged, cosseted and a busybody who sticks her nose in others’ business without noting that her own happiness and chief means of providing happiness to others are being neglected.

The Emma/Knightley banter is Shakespearean level wit.

“The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage.”

“Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.”

As in other Austen novels’ love-matches, the age difference is both pronounced and of secondary importance to the other considerations of the day. Knightley is described as “16 years older” than Emma, and that excuses his chastising her naive interferences and explains his older brotherly tolerance and familiarity that enable him to get away with it.

She’s a tad obnoxious. He’d be crucified, in this day and age, for constantly pointing it out.

“Badly done, Emma!”

Their ease with each other and affectionately comfortable relationship has an almost-siblings undercurrent. And Paltrow earned her bones as a leading lady in playing that melting moment when she sees Knightley’s chivalry towards Harriet, and her little breakdown when she realizes her connection to him is more than friendship or fraternal devotion.

That’s something the Anya Taylor-Joy “emma.” lacked, despite having the cast littered with rising stars who might someday turn into the next McGregor, Stevenson, Cumming, Collette or Northam. The emotional moments in “emma.” don’t hit you the way they do in “Emma.”

One additional reason for that comes from the one Oscar that the first film won, one more than “emma.” managed. Rachel Portman’s Academy Award-winning score is one of the great pieces of romantic film music. And if Northam doesn’t sweep you up in this film’s finale, if Paltrow’s Emma doesn’t touch your heart, Portman’s melody washes over the proceedings and resistence becomes futile.

“Mr. Knightley, if I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream”

Rating: Ever so PG

Cast Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Jeremy Northam, Ewan McGregor, Greta Scacchi, Polly Walker, Alan Cumming and Juliette Stevenson

Credits: Scripted and directed by Douglas McGrath, based on the novel by Jane Austen. A Miramax release on Amazon, PosiTV, etc.

Running time: 2:00