An Outrageous, Gleefully Offensive Comedy Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (22 April 2020)

It is rare to find a film that is at once as highbrow and lowbrow as The Favorite. It's an almost stately period piece filled with the finest costumes and sets, as well as the most refined accents and outlandish wigs, which concerns itself with court intrigues and addresses matters such as parliamentary politics and the royal finances. It's also an outrageous, dirty minded, and sometimes downright lewd sex comedy not unlike the works of Jude Apatow. And this massive dichotomy is what makes it all so much fun.
The plot revolves around the fierce competition between cousins Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham for the favor of an aging and increasingly addled Queen Anne. It all starts subtly and mostly innocently enough, but rapidly becomes more outlandish and deeply bitter until we're not sure everyone is going to come out alive. All boundaries of decency and believability are crossed well before the end, but that's half the fun.
It's notable that while there are certainly protagonists and antagonists, there is no-one who could be remotely describes as a hero or heroine. Aside from Queen Anne, who is extremely mercurial, rather needy, and increasingly detached from reality, practically everyone in this movie is ambitious, scheming, backstabbing, and incredibly petty, if not downright b*tchy. And it's a far more interesting movie for it. There is something fascinating and deeply shocking about watching these educated, wealthy, supposedly refined nobles constantly bickering, cursing like students at a public high school, and "romantically" pursuing each other with all the fervor and subtlety of drunken frat bros and sex starved sorority girls, while somehow maintaining a façade of genteel manners when anyone is looking. It's rather like a regency period Mean Girls.
And what girls they are. Emma Stone is in a rare form as Abigale. Intelligent, cultured, conniving, and utterly ruthless in her climb to the top, she's equally willing to betray her closest friend or jettison her own dignity, and we can't help but root for her most of the way. This may be her best performance to date. Rachel Weisz is also very good as Lady Sarah. Though not as outrageous or conniving as Abigale, she is extremely strong willed, resolute, and not at all above being a catty B when it suits her.
And Olivia Colman is priceless as Queen Anne. Capricious yet oddly stubborn, she's begging for attention and affection one moment, then erupting into mad tantrums the next. She would be a petty tyrant if she had the ruthlessness to be tyrannical. Instead she's like that rich, crazy old great aunt that everyone in the family has to pretend to like. Or perhaps an unruly toddler who must be very carefully coddled to sleep. And her comedic timing is impeccable. Just when you think she's calmed down and the argument has passed, she says or does the darnedest things. The whole movie's like that really, delivering the biggest shocks and laughs with no warning.
From a historical standpoint, this is mostly utter nonsense. But for a comedy which makes no claim of historical accuracy, this is hardly a problem. What I do consider a problem is the unfortunate inclusion of the "fruit throwing" scene. At the very least it could have involved better looking people, perhaps with more clothes. And admittedly it does get a bit slow in one patch towards the end. But those are very minor faults
This is a very unconventional blend of elements which easily could have pushed the film apart into a disjointed mess full of wild tonal shifts. Or overemphasis on any one part could have dragged it down into overwrought soap opera clichés or boring crassness, like the recent Sherlock Holmes spoof. But instead the filmmakers and cast have carefully walked the tightrope, delivering results that are oft fascinating and wildly funny. I don't know why this didn't win best comedy at the Globes, because it surely should have.