Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age: more style than substance?
I'm not a big fan of historical costume epics, and the sight of the horrible CGI Armada in the trailer for Shekhar Kapur's sequel to 1998's Elizabeth was enough to send my expectations of this film down to the bottom of the English Channel.
All in all, the critics seem to agree that this film places style above substance, and despite a stellar cast, it is unlikely to feature on Academy Awards night (unless it be for best makeup, which its predecessor won almost 10 years ago).
"Where Kapur's first Elizabeth was cool, cerebral, fascinatingly concerned with complex plotting, the new movie is pitched at the level of a Jean Plaidy romantic novel," writes our own Peter Bradshaw, while the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert reckons "the costumes are so sumptuous, the sets so vast, the music so insistent, that we lose sight of the humans behind the dazzle of the production".
The blogosphere also labels this one a pretty bad Queen Bess. "The Golden Age possesses merits, but as far as being a great film that captivates and illustrates the magnificent splendor of her leadership, it misdirects too much attention on all the wrong elements of this period in her history," writes Movies Every Day's Scooter Thompson, while Coming Soon's blog says the film "suffers from Kapur's efforts to make every shot be a beautiful artistic painting".
But the BBC's Stella Papamichael is a rare dissenting voice. "Even though the script plays fast and loose with historical facts, that indomitable bulldog spirit rings true and holds you captive for the duration," she writes.
What did you think of Elizabeth: The Golden Age? Does it deserve a long reign over the box office, or a swift Mary, Queen of Scots-style decapitation?
