An overrated, but charming, bit of fluff

Rating: 6/10 (31 July 1999)

An overrated, but charming, bit of fluff; as is true in many minor movies, the atmospherics are better than the main plot. One gets a real feel for what it was probably like in Elizabethan England to be an impecunious player. The jokes are amusing, but much too arch; the story is the sort of thing that one expects from Harvard or Oxbridge undergraduates. The minor characters are far better etched than the stars. The few campy minutes of Queen Elizabeth are far better than the whole dull lump of the putative heroine.