Review of Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) by Robert W — 05 Jan 2009

How this film manages to get so little drama out of one of the most dramatic periods of Western History is beyond me. This was the prelude to the greatest naval battle of all time (the Spanish Armada).

Britain was facing impossible odds, but the film chooses to slight these monumental events in favor of the love triangle between Queen Elizabeth, Bess Throckmorton, and Walter Raleigh. What is it with Hollywood and movies about great naval battles? Midway back in the 1970s, Pearl Harbor and now Elizabeth the Golden Age are all movies that culminate in some of the greatest naval battles in Western History, yet each of those films is bogged down by plodding love triangles, or, in the case of Midway a forbidden love affair between the young pilot and a Japanese-American woman.