Review of The Queen (2006) by Chads. — 06 Apr 2007

Some viewers of "The Queen" will heed Tracy Ullman's outcry and nod in agreement about those stubborn royals needing to defrost their collective upper lips and pay their respects to "the people's princess"; while the rest of us will take stock that Ullman's televised soapbox is beaming from Hollywood, California.

The filmmaker used Ullman because her attitude is indicative of an environment and industry, which encourages its denizens to display emotion, to cry on cue when the cameras are rolling. In my opinion, we're supposed to make the connection between this expatriate and the British people who queued up in front of Buckingham Palace with their bouquets and tear-streaked faces.

This public display of grief is put on by people who seek the limelight, the film seems to be implying, just like those Hollywood notables who attended Princess Di's funeral. In a style befitting the late land-mine crusader's memory, well-wishers who wanted to truly honor Diana Spencer's memory, quite ironically, should've enacted the queen's way, the prudent way; which was to mourn in private, so as not to give the media something to shoot; the media who eventually killed her.

"The Queen" is clearly on her majesty's side. In a crafty move on the filmmaker's part, we never get a reaction shot from the queen when she receives news of both, Princess Di's accident and death.

It's uncertain who HRH Elizabeth II(Helen Mirren) is crying for as she waits for vehicular assistance in that riverbank, but at least the flowing water she temporarily rules over, like her tears, are real; they're private tears, unlike the crocodile tears shed by the media whores who purportedly cared about the late Princess Diana, a person they never even met.