Review of Mary Queen of Scots (2018) by Brent_Marchant — 22 Dec 2018

Who would have thought that a movie with such great performances, production values and cinematography could be so dull? Unfortunately, that's the case with this period piece drama. Much of the fault lies with the muddled screenplay, which tries so hard not to spoon-feed the audience that it ends up failing to make clear such significant story elements as delineating the rival factions at play and defining the rules of royal succession.

In its attempts to explain these things (and not all that well, I might add), the story ends up becoming cumbersome, jumbled and, at times, just plain boring. That's too bad, because Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie deliver excellent portrayals of their historic characters, and many in the film's crew obviously went to a lot of hard work to produce gorgeous sets, costumes and makeup, Regrettably, though, those efforts are all for naught in a film whose mediocre writing and subsequent mediocre execution betray these other fine attributes.