Review of Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) by Elizabeth L — 06 Feb 2009

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[font=Century Gothic]In "Elizabeth," the movie that put her firmly on the map, Cate Blanchett is superb as Queen Elizabeth I. The movie's success also comes from telling the lesser known story of Elizabeth's rise to power. The movie is definitely engrossing but does have some freaky parallels with "The Godfather."[/font].

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[font=Century Gothic]"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" starts in 1585 as King Philip(Jordi Molla) of Spain is planning to invade England with a huge fleet. At the time, Elizabeth is still without an heir which is causing quite a bit of concern around court. To stem some of this talk, she has imprisoned her cousin and rival Queen Mary(Samantha Morton) of Scotland.[/font].

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[font=Century Gothic]Unlike the first movie, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" is simply not any good, and nowhere near as good as the recent miniseries starring Helen Mirren, despite Shekhar Kapur returning as director and Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush returning to star. An early scene serves as a microcosm of the film's faults. Walter Raleigh(Clive Owen) throws his jacket across a muddy patch in the road for his queen. It is a nice entrance but it also corny and most likely apocryphal and starts the movie down a road favoring soap opera instead of history, lush visuals over substance and a misplaced focus on the relationship between Elizabeth and Raleigh as a very large armed group of Spaniards are on the way. That the film takes England's side so fiercely reeks of nativism when in fact this was a battle between two autocrats representing two equally silly and repressive belief systems.[/font].