A great movie for scenery lovers.

Rating: 3/10 (26 December 2006)

For everyone else it's pretty God awful. A definite double feature for Guantamano Bay. What hurts the most is you get the feeling that this really could have been an awesome movie. It sets itself up for court intrigue, you get no court intrigue. An interesting arranged marriage is made, it's as bland as unflavored oatmeal. This is the time of the French Revolution, the age of Voltaire and Franklin - where are these two giants of the age? Most of all, where are the French Revolutionaries? Instead of just weighing the film down with pregnant yet still-born shots of how beautiful it all was, we should have been given a view of what they were doing to the country. Where is Paris with its masses wallowing in misery? Granted the royals were aloof and completely removed from the needs of the people, the audience is not. When an adviser says they will raise the taxes just a little bit, we the audience need to see and feel the ramifications of it. Where are the people being beaten and incarcerated for the simple crime of being poor? That was the truth of the age. Without that kind of contrast, you get far too many hours of bratty teenagers of a different age enjoying themselves. Ho -and- Hum.
If the movie had not remained as aloof to the audience as the French Royalty was to the people of France, it could have been Oscar material. As is? It has a nice soundtrack.
PS: The French Revolution happened 13 years after the American Revolution. Granted much of the unrest was caused by military spending, it was not the support of the American Revolution which pushed them over the brink as the movie seems to imply.