As bad as Braveheart - and that's B.A.D.

Rating: 1/10 (4 October 2009)

After the superb earlier Elizabeth movie starring Cate Blanchett I sat down to watch this expecting more of the same. Instead I saw Margaret Thatcher & Errol Flynn take on the dark lord Sauron as scripted by the Comic Strip.
I should have known from the opening scenes which depicted Fotheringay Castle as set in a lake and surrounded by mountains. The Northamptonshire Alps perchance? The 52-year-old Elizabeth (the film opens in 1585) is still busy looking for a husband and issuing public statements about her fertility. Enter Clive Owen as Errol Flynn as Raleigh (with a bit of Drake, Essex & Leicester grafted on so as to avoid confusing the viewer with more than one leading man). There's one ludicrous piece of outright Flynnery when Raleigh single-handedly sets fire to the Spanish Armada. Blanchett sounds like a strident renaissance Thatcher. Samantha Morton gives Mary, Queen of Scots a twee Scottish accent which it is highly unlikely the real Mary ever possessed, having been taken to France as a small child and subsequently spent less than eight years in Scotland. Philip II is shown as the evil mastermind, plotting- mostly in shadow - the downfall of Elizabeth.
After interminable scenes of dancing and Thatcher/Flynn flirting Mary is executed having been caught bang to rights up to her soon-to-have-the-head-separated-from-it-neck in plotting to kill Thatcher. None of the genuine historical ambivalence about her 'guilt' is displayed. I half expected Tom Hollander - her jailer - to shout 'you're nicked, chummy'.
Meanwhile Blanchett/Elizabeth/Thatcher morphs into Boadicea/Joan of Arc, dressed in full body armour and with her hair having grown three feet in a day and addresses her troops. The famous line about being a 'weak and feeble woman' is excised from the script, probably for fear of offending somebody. Drake gets a brief mention during the sea battle (which, conveniently, can be seen clearly from the shore by the Queen) but otherwise is non-existent.
Enough. I've wasted enough of my life watching this drivel without taking up more time writing about it. It really is as bad as Braveheart. I hope I haven't given anyone any ideas saying that. "When Wallace met Lizzie" may yet be made.