Elizabeth: The Golden Age

A big historical film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. On the one hand there are attempts at some sort of psychological storyline that often fall flat due to situations that are either awfully unfitting for a concept like this, or with a logic that is very misguided. As a result, the characters lose all their humanity, the viewer can get under the skin of the heroes, which is why some emotional outbursts en up causing laughter. On the other hand, for pure popcorn fun, there isn’t enough action. The camera and the direction also feel quite schizophrenic, in a sea of utterly unoriginal scenes, you get glimpses of something that with a bit of ambition could be called a signature, but alas, these are only exceptions. All this makes Elizabeth: The Golden Age nothing but an average historical film that is saved from total catastrophe mostly by the good actors. Kapur should try making a smaller genre piece. (14/10/2008)

Even though Cate is consistently excellent and incredibly asexual, which is nothing unusual in her case, the film itself is quite boring. Yes, there are significant historical events, but one gets the feeling that a different director made this. It's something like the difference between "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal". However, in the case of "Elizabeth", the director is still the same, he just tries to be extremely pompous and overly dramatic after nine years, resulting in an inflated film that cannot decide what is more important - the queen's personal life or the historical events. Neither is as well-balanced in this case as it is in the film "Elizabeth". (26/02/2014)

A bland popcorn flick that can hardly be compared to the first one, which was more minimalistic and less mass audience-oriented. It lacks drama and a “realistic” portrayal of history, and it also lacks the typical action story and action itself. The characters deliver cliché dialogues, their relationships are black and white, leaving our eyes only for the excellent Cate Blanchett and a few very intimate scenes. Forget about seeing a thrilling naval battle, if you are seeking quality and interesting content better turn to the captivating Master and Commander. In the end, Elizabeth: The Golden Age it’s like seeing an average and completely unimpressive mediocre film. (01/12/2007)

Queen Elizabeth II. Or rather, Elizabeth the First, Kapur’s "part two". Bess’s life story is so abundant, and offers a number of perspectives and can easily withstand the overwhelming quantity of adaptations that have emerged in the last couple of years. An opulent (and how opulent!), but intimate picture, shot in such a way that it seems as it was painted by the Dutch masters. And up until the execution (oops, spoiler alert) of Mary Stuart it is an amazing movie in every sense possible. But then it shifts toward the conflict with the Spanish Armada and Kapur starts to overindulge the kitschy slow motion shots of all kinds of things fluttering, waves crashing, bosoms heaving, uplifting speeches and so on. Luckily he has Cate Blanchett to back him up, who could be able shoulder two hours of completely still footage. (27/02/2009)

Don’t expect an intimate drama with characters portrayed in detail like in the first installment. Prepare for popcorn shortcuts, superficial glitter in the form of beautiful costumes and forceful milking of the audience’s emotions. Many obviously important characters disappear before the viewer realizes who they were. And the only two characters that make sense in the story (and are well played) are the villains played by Jordi Mollà and Samantha Morton. Director Shekhar Kapur is much better with darkness than with light, and he should try his hand at horror movies. The only thing Blanchett and Owen do is strike fancy poses. I’m afraid that this film was originally longer and we can only guess if it was cut down to size because the non-existent chemistry between Blanchett and Owen (the main failing of the film) was not helped by the additional scenes, or just for commercial reasons, for the consumer audience. At any rate, this resulting “fast” version is closer to Bruckheimer’s King Arthur than to the original Elizabeth. (16/10/2007)