Particularly bad music.

Rating: 1/10 (26 October 1998)

This film, posted as a "bodice ripper", was in fact tame to the point of dullness. Even worse, I felt that details of the plot and action were sometimes hopelessly absurd: for example can you imagine the Queen fornicating in view of her ladies in waiting? or a priest committing violent murder even in England of the 1550s? or that Queen Mary Tudor really was so ugly? To make a film of this sort dramatically effective, it must be convincing in its detail, and this "Elizabeth" was not.
However my major grievance is the music. We are long accustomed to lush string tone attempting to summon up the atmosphere of Olde Worlde Englande, but Walton did it so much better ("Touch her sweet lips and part" - this was real music). Here we have a pastiche of a pastiche, with all the lumbering dullness of so many bad period costume dramas of the past. For example, the "Volta" was a dance thought lascivious at the time - not a hint of this from the music here! The quotation from Elgar's "Enigma" (with a wordless female chorus - bless us) seemed hopelessly inappropriate and the pseudo-Handelian chorus at the end nearly had me falling out of my seat.
Film music CAN be good - for example, that of Prokofiev and Walton, good enough to stand alone - but so rarely is.