Toronto: 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'

"Fear creates fear," Cate Blanchett's Queen Elizabeth I schools her advisors early on in Shekhar Kapur's sequel to just regular Elizabeth. Said advisors are freaked out that Spain and the Pope are making noises about a holy war on England, because they assume Britain's millions of Catholics will automatically side with their church. Enemies walk among us! But Elizabeth remains stalwart. "I will not punish my people for their beliefs."

Get it? Huh? Get it? The handsomely mounted film, in its cute ADD way, soon forgets its half-hearted attempt to make History Relevant To What Is Going On In The World Today and morphs into a sort of Classic Comics on acid, or as a friend so brilliantly put it, "the longest Eurythmics video ever made." By the time Clive Owen's Sir Walter Raleigh starts making like Errol Flynn against the Spanish armada and Blanchett's Queen dons a suit of armor to do a Joan-of-Arc-by-way-of-Henry-V bit, you'll barely know that almost two hours have passed. But you will leave the theater with an emptier head than the one you walked in with.

Comments

[Marshall]

There are so many pull-quotes in there, it's beautiful. Seriously. Sounds like fun.

[Justine]

I'm not sure if this makes me want to see the film all the more, or avoid it at all costs. Regardless it made me laugh :p