I Laughed -- I Cried -- I Cheered For Blanco The Wonder Horse!!!

Rating: 8/10 (18 October 2007)

Magnificent, lavish, stunning -- all these words apply. They apply to Cate Blanchett's looks, her talent, her sheer overwhelming allure as Elizabeth, the Golden Queen of England's Golden Age. Unfortunately, the movie itself does not quite live up to the limitless beauty, artistry and sheer animal fascination of Cate the Great.
Elizabeth was always decisive, dramatic, and intelligent, but this movie wanders in a daze from dark, dank, chilly looking rooms where nasty people mumble about plots and murder, to lavish and almost comically inappropriate love scenes, to huge phony looking vistas of stormy seas and galloping horses, and then back to more torture, more mumbling, and more incoherent emotional fireworks.
Cate Blanchett, not yet forty, is so stunning in every frame it seems laughable to see her grapple with Elizabeth's fear of old age and decay. Clive Owen is actually pretty good as Sir Walter Raleigh, a stud who knows he's got what it takes and sort of lazily enjoys himself, in a laid back, Nicolas Cage sort of way. And newcomer Abbie Cornish is, to put it mildly, yummy. Picture Kate Winslet only sexier!!! As long as it's just heated whispers between these three, the movie manages well enough. It's sort of a dry-humping menage with fabulous costumes and endless closeups of the architecture. You'll cry when you see how much the lush and beautiful Elizabeth longs for one last night of pleasure, only to see her innocent (but ripe and desirable) young lady in waiting steal away the rugged man of her dreams. But after an hour you start to wonder, is this ALL we're going to see?
Cut away to Samantha Morton, stranded in a bleak castle and forced to play the alluring, sensual, and irresistible Mary Queen of Scots as some sort of gibbering lunatic. With an accent somewhere between Braveheart and Trainspotting. I kept waiting for her to say, "hoot, mon! Ye canna be killin' the likes of me!" The real Mary spoke French, by the way. She was funnier, prettier, had nicer manners, and washed more often.
But in this movie, Mary is not helpless and sweet, she's crazy and evil. I mean, eeeevil!! Once she turns loose her flying monkeys -- sorry, I meant her fanatical assassins -- you'll thrill to the most electrifying intrigue ever filmed. Or not. Actually, the assassination in the church scores big points as comedy, as the trembling teenage assassin apparently falls into some sort of hypnotic trance the moment he catches his first glimpse of Cate Blanchett's ghostly white face. Just what is supposed to be happening here? Was Elizabeth a psychic who could hypnotize her enemies and turn weak-minded boys into sex slaves? I kept waiting for her to say, "you are getting sleepy . . . sleepy . . . no, not the audience, just you with the pistol!" This scene felt like it went on for three hours and when it was over I still couldn't figure out why the young man didn't pull the trigger. Then a few scenes later Walsingham mumbles that it "wasn't loaded." Well, that clears things right up for me. Thanks! Not to interrupt, but Nicholson and Hirst, the two screenwriters for this thing, must have been doing a pretty heavy drug regimen to keep their minds limber, just like Jeff Lebowski in THE BIG LEBOWSKI.
But the problems don't stop with a script clearly written by stoned or drunk men. When the big battle scenes come at the end, Shekha Khapur demonstrates clearly that he is absolutely tone-deaf to the visual music of film. He can't manage to put together more than two minutes of real action footage, without cutting away to the most laughable and inexplicable junk ever filmed.You'll thrill to the heroism of Sir Walter Raleigh, diving from his blazing fire ship and "aiming to find bottom" just like Huckleberry Finn after a steamboat crash. Then you'll giggle like a madman at the sight of Elizabeth wandering through her empty tent with a dazed look on her face, like the heroine of a romance novel waiting for a hot date. (Where were the dozens of soldiers, nobles, and aides?) You'll cheer for Blanco The Wonder Horse -- a white stallion who, for no reason at all, is shown diving from a sinking galleon and swimming to safety. What does it say about a movie when an uncredited animal who contributes nothing to the plot steals the climax of the picture? Then you'll giggle like a madman again as we cut to meaningless shots of lightning, praying monks, and a twitching Philip of Spain realizing he's made a terrible mistake. I guess that lightning really got to him.
Finally, the whole Armada sequence finishes up with jaw-dropping non sequiturs, as Elizabeth, for no apparent reason, sheds her armor and wanders out into the night in her lovely nightie, to stand on the shore alone and take deep breaths and close her eyes in orgiastic pleasure at the sight of hundreds of burning Spanish galleons in the distance. Right, it makes perfect sense. Frankly, I was waiting for Blanco The Wonder Horse to swim ashore and make love to her all night long.
The real problem with this film is that it pays lip-service to the idea of a liberated, strong, assertive Elizabeth, but the only language the director speaks fluently is that of Gothic romance. So even when Elizabeth is celebrating her greatest victory, she has to be shown in a super-feminine posture. She's alone, in a sexy white bed gown, on a windswept cliff, looking as if she's a nubile young maiden aching with desire for Blanco The Wonder Horse.
Cate Blanchett deserves better than this. Elizabeth deserves better than this. Even Blanco The Wonder Horse deserves better than this!