More historical nonsense from Mingella

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2004)

Lovely pictures in a soft focus style. Kidman a delight to look at, but if the film was any slower it would go in reverse.
Huge chunks of hollywood style rewriting of history, without any compensating entertainment.
When you leave the cinema, you quickly realise that the film has no backbone or message of any kind - either from the writing or direction. This is cinema at its most transient; with good cinematography but few persistent images, even fewer convincing patches of dialogue, it is all form but no structure.
Renee whatshername plays a good Tom Sawyer character, but is this enough to justify nearly 3 hours of my life watching an entirely predictable load of tosh (however prettily filmed).
Mingella started out in TV and should have stayed there.