A Pretty Tudor Thriller

Rating: 7/10 (1 March 2008)

First, an easy quiz (which you're going to get wrong): How many wives did King Henry VIII have? Answer at the end of this article, but why not try to figure it out before looking? Oh, too late, you already did...
And now, a question: Did Henry VIII always look like Charles Laughton, with the heft and bulges of the most memorable actor in the role of the monarch? The truth is that both the king and Laughton looked a lot better when they were young.
Instead of a fat, dissolute Henry, there was back in the early 16th century a trimmer, more handsome king, who soon ate and married too much. That Henry, not the famous picture of him by Holbein, must have looked like Eric Bana.
And so, in Philippa Gregory's Hollywood-compliant but terrifically entertaining "The Other Boleyn Girl," it is Bana - from the non-green scenes of the 2003 "Hulk" - who rules, while the real-life plain-to-ugly Boleyn girls are brought to you by Natalie Portman (Anne) and Scarlett Johansson (Mary).
It is to their credit and, especially, that of director Justin Chadwick that you buy all these prettifications, all or most of author Gregory's romantic liberties with the story, and enjoy the movie thoroughly.
Chadwick is new to feature films, but he has solid credits in TV, especially with the recent magnificent BBC "Bleak House," as fine a realization of Dickens as you'll find anywhere.
And, speaking of the BBC, if you want to see a less "pretty," more substantial version of Gregory's novel, dig up the 2003 TV version of "The Other Boleyn Girl," with Jodhi May and Natascha McElhone; those two run rings around the smirking Portman and the too-angelic Johansson. The exalted Peter Morgan wrote the screenplay - as well as for the superior "The Queen" and "The Last King of Scotland" - and an in-depth research project is just waiting for the right scholar to compare Morgan's "Boleyn" script with Philippa Lowthorpe's for the TV version.
So, with novelist, script writer, director, and a darn fine yarn to begin with, the new film has much going for it. The supposedly well-known story of Henry's marriage to Anne and dalliance with Mary is told well, bringing into focus a great many sub-stories of background machinations by a power-hungry family using the two sisters as bait.
If at first you must overcome the challenge of seeing Anne Boleyn behind Portman's glitz and 21st-century 'tude, by the time the character reaches the catastrophic comeuppance for her (and her family's) scheming, Portman comes close to the touchstone established by Jodhi May.
Quiz answer: Two. Surely you think six, but that's not right. Four of Henry's marriages were annulled, which means officially they never existed. Although Gregory's book doesn't deal with this tricky question, you can take the information to the bank.