It's not easy being Queen.....

Rating: 4/10 (1 January 2011)

Not since "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" has our greatest monarch been so ill - served."Elizabeth:The Golden Age" is dumbed down tosh that would have been kicked out of an "Eastenders" story conference.It patronises its audience that clearly is supposed not to be able to accept or even understand that 21st century values and conventions did not apply in Tudor times.Women were considered mainly as objects for male pleasure and their main use was to continue a bloodline.This applied even to Queens.Hence the concern over Elizabeth's childless state.The only way she could keep the throne was to behave in a manner so ruthless it would have made her late father blanch. She may have had lovers but they were strictly for political gain or to perform a purely sexual function.She was never to display weakness or vulnerability. I find her physical contact with Bess Throckmorton to be highly fanciful but it might please a modern audience looking for some girl - on - girl action. Mr C.Owen plays Raleigh as a second - rate Errol Flynn,defying his Queen with flashing eyes and sparkling teeth. Miss Blanchett has certainly mastered the English accent but she poses rather than acts and barely seems in control of her horse during her battle speech. Mr G.Rush seems to have decided to play Walsingham as if he was in a state of acute sleep - deprivation.Elizabeth would have had him for breakfast. The interwoven plot about Mary,Queen of Scots,seems to have atrophied on the vine,so to speak.Only on the morning of her cousin's execution does Elizabeth seem to have given the matter much consideration. Still,it's not easy being Queen............. I wondered,as the film came to a close,what it was actually supposed to have been about.The Spanish Armada?The growing pains of the Anglican church?The end of the Spanish Empire?The love affair between Raleigh and Bess Throckmorton?The conceit that anyone can fall in lurve even the Virgin Queen?All of the above? Whatever,it failed to engage my interest at any of those levels.