Other BOOOO-leyn Girl

Rating: 4/10 (22 April 2013)

Why, oh why do people feel the need to "improve" on a best-seller? I know it's usually the case for a movie to fall short of expectations when the book was so successful, but successful novel-based films aren't impossible to find: Lord of the Rings, The Shawshank Redemption, Sense and Sensibility, The Shining, Schindler's List, Jaws, Jurassic Park, even Bridget Jones's Diary!
It's perfectly forgivable to forgo a few plot points to save on time, but when you forgo key elements of the story which made it a page-turner in the first place, you sacrifice crucial character development and you're audience is in for a world of disappointment. Because, to be honest, who cares about a movie full of plot when you don't give a toss about the people experiencing it? Now I'm not saying that The Other Boleyn Girl was a tragic, horrible, hot mess, but I truly am sorry that it missed so many opportunities to be great, especially when it already had a successful and juicy blue-print to work off of.
Missed opportunity 1: We lost the chance to see one of the most wonderfully colorful villainesses to come along in years. Yes, Natalie Portman's Anne Boleyn was a brat with ambition and most of the time you wanted to smack her, but the film version turned the dial way down and left out wonderfully horrific details and for what? She got her head chopped off for a reason.
Missed opportunity 2: Where's the romance? A book that's full of "love, sex, ambition, and intrigue" was not in the movie that I saw. The whole third act of the book revolves around a romance of Mary's that ends up saving her life and it's given a good thirty seconds on screen.
Missed opportunity 3: The novel is told vividly from Mary's point of view and for good reason. The title should have been a hint.
Verdict: Read the book. Forget the movie.