Costumes on Parade.

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 1998)

Isn't it funny how filmmakers will go on and on about how historically accurate their costumes are, and they muck up history in the story so wildly?
This film is all about costumes. If you don't already know the history (and how this film is wildly deviating from it), I can't imagine that this movie would make any sense whatsoever. These people are killed, these people are running around on a battlefield, these people are locked in jail... things happen in this movie with absolutely no explanation. It becomes just a succession of costumes and images, like a music video.
The film is trying to focus on the psychological consequences of suddenly being made queen. Do you cave in, or do you rise to the occasion? I don't mind historical creativity when the filmmakers have a literary idea that they want to get across, but this movie can't do it well enough and it simply becomes a huge turgid mess.
Performances are good, especially Cate Blanchett, and Richard Attenborough has the one scene in this fim which contains any real emotion. The guy who plays the French Ambassador is a burning white hot sizzling hunk of molten love and really worth the price of admission if you like 'em mean and swarthy.
Other than that, this film has a kind of lurid obsession with violence... severed heads, slit throats, scars and scabs and boils all lovingly admired... I didn't like that.
If you want to see a good version of this story watch the first two episodes of the BBC mini-series "Elizabeth R" with Glenda Jackson. Glenda ROCKS as Elizabeth... she seems brilliant and strong from the start, not a stray waif from a Gap ad who happens to be made queen, and she doesn't take ANY crap from ANYONE, the way this pushover Elizabeth does in this film. Plus the story makes sense, and is a very exciting and suspenseful one, not like the boring muck this movie became. Rent that, then see this if you need a laugh, and want to see that ambassador.
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