visually stunning, but . . .

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 1999)

I've long been interested in seeing this film; the TV ads certainly looked great. I agree that "Elizabeth" is visually stunning, and contains perhaps the year's greatest female performance, by Cate Blanchett. But on the whole, it's an interesting political thriller, not history. The screenplay is almost incoherent at times. We also get a lot of lines "talking" about the conditions of England at the time, but very little "showing" what kind of country Elizabeth had to rule. There is almost no historical context, and of course, a lot of the events are sheer inventions for dramatic purposes. I think a lot more thought could have been put into the script. But, as all too often happens today, the writer seems preoccupied with "will it sell to an audience? It's history, after all. Hmm, better fill it with a lot of gore, sex scenes, campy humor, sexual references, etc." all at the expense of plot or understanding. I would rather have kept more of the Catholic-Protestant question (which actually drops out halfway through the picture) than all the foolishness about the Queen, er, Duke of Anjou.

From many of the other comments of the same kind here, I see that movie audiences are a lot smarter than Hollywood thinks.
Oh, one more thing, for what it's worth. I'm a medieval historian, and not completely versed in Tudor England by any means, but a friend who is a historian of Tudor times says that the decors in the film were not really accurate. Contrary to the way the film portrays it, the English court didn't live in the middle of vast, darkened cathedrals. There was a lot of comfortable, cheery, domestic space and architecture, for example, at Hampton Court.
Altogether, something of a disappointment.