Mind boggingly boring! No historical epic, no action, and not worthy of 5 minutes

Rating: 1/10 (29 January 2008)

I love history, I love historical epics and I thought a new sharp update on the Marie Antoinette story would be terrific!! I couldn't have been more wrong. I'm blown away by the amount of people that could actually find anything even remotely interesting or entertaining about this movie but then I've been on the other side of that argument in various movies as well. To each their own but my own for this movie is that it was drop dead awful. I try to never turn a film off no matter how much I'm hating it and it was dreadfully brutal getting through this one and by the time it was half way through I was half watching it and half reading a book and I kept looking up from my book and thinking 'My God, is this still on?' The sheer fact that Sofia Coppola who directed and wrote this movie is Oscar nominated director and Oscar winning writer is sheer mind blowing. Although maybe it wasn't entirely her responsibility because there was simply one thing that made me not give this horrendous snooze fest a ZERO and that is the fact that its very, very pretty...but if this doesn't prove looks aren't everything than nothing does. The costumes are outstanding, enormous, larger than life and that is where it ends period.
Now none of this blame will fall on its young star. Kirsten Dunst plays the lovely Marie Antoinette who comes from Austria to marry the French Dauphin. Dunst is very good, very spirited, cute, sexy even in some scenes and does carry the movie just fine considering it has no story, no action, no climax or anything else worthwhile. This was a disgrace to her talent. Jason Schwartzman barely has a pulse as the insatiably BORING Louis XVI. Rip Torn is a joke and barely noticeable as Louis XV and Judy Davis (an award worthy actress) is annoying and nagging as Dunst's mother. No one else is worth mentioning because everyone acts the same, there is different characters or stand out performances outside of Dunst's performance.
When I originally saw trailers for this film I thought it was less historical or more of this hip retelling of the story complete with modern music which instead of being throughout the film is randomly thrown in there just to make things seem strange. They also would lead you to believe in the trailers that Antoinette is this wild child Queen who shakes everything up and she barely even shakes herself up. Everyone is simply dreadfully boring. Basically every idea you might have about this film from trailers is completely wrong. Other than the beautiful costume design and Dunst there is absolutely no reason to even look at this. You can see everything worth seeing in five minutes and save yourself the disaster of sitting through this. Dunst is sexualized in various costumes and situations to try and make it seem more interesting but it doesn't work. Oscar or no Oscar Coppola should be banned from movies for making this. 1/10