Yummy movie to look at but little substance

Rating: 5/10 (9 March 2007)

Sorry to add a pretty late comment, but I just caught it on DVD! I agree with people who decry the lack of dialogue, direction, acting skills, scope, and in-depth characterization. Kirsten Dunst is without a doubt a mediocre actress (and not especially beautiful either). Maybe that explains why she had only about a page of dialogue to carry the entire movie.
On the plus side, the costumes and set decorations are magnificent and authentic-looking, certainly much more so than the 1938 MGM version, which also had superb sets and costumes, but in a Holywoodized way. Well, when you have the chance to use Versailles to the extent that Coppola was allowed to, you definitely have a leg up on authenticity! (Btw, has any director ever been granted the same kind of access Coppola was?) The whole movie was like a luscious box of candies in pastel colors! Also, I give her props for using some actual dialogue and incidents (for example, the morning dressing ceremony and the moment M-A and Louis found out they had become King and Queen), and general faithfulness to history, although we don't have any definitive proof one way or the other that M-A actually slept with Fersen the way it was depicted in the movie. Given all that, it irks me that no one caught the error in which courtiers kept addressing M-A and Louis as "Your Majesties" when they were still Dauphine and Dauphin. The proper address was "Your Royal Highnesses" as was done correctly in the early part of the movie.
Because of the lush location shoot at Versailles and the beautiful costumes, which add immensely to the look and feel of the movie, I have to give it a middling 5. Without those assets, I would have gone as low as 3 for all the deficiencies mentioned above.