Gorgeous photography, lousy script

Rating: 5/10 (26 October 2006)

Marie Antoinette is a visually stunning, lushly photographed movie with gorgeous costumes, sets and natural scenes. The costumes alone must have cost about $20 million. Some of the scenes are so extraordinary they would make beautiful paintings to hang on the wall. For those virtues it would get 10 stars.
Unfortunately, the pace is glacially slow, the acting wooden or worse, and the script, awful. I checked a biography of Marie Antoinette, and the story is true to her life in many regards. Too bad she was a pampered, spoiled brat whose life, and that of her court, was full of the stifling trivial activities we saw in the film: eating dainties, being fitted for new gowns and shoes, playing dice and cards, and gossiping with the girls. None of this makes for interesting drama.
Kirsten Dunst plays her as a sweet girl, misjudged by others, but basically a simp. The life of Marie and Louis XVI was just not interesting enough to make a movie about them, except possibly their dramatic end game where they were imprisoned and beheaded, neither of which is included in this film. Dunst is a pretty young woman but an actress who delivers the petty lines of this script like an amateur.
Jason Schwartzman, as her dauphin, is even worse. He sounds like a junior high school student in his first drama class.
Comparison with the movie Elizabeth (1998), starring Cate Blanchett immediately comes to mind. Now that was a fine movie! Blanchett's top-notch acting brought Elizabeth I of England to life as a sweet young woman who survived mayhem to rapidly grow into a shrewd leader who could protect herself and use the men around her to her advantage.