| THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL |
 2008 - UK / USADirector: Justin Chadwick
- Reviewed by Vickie
Because you know what? Natalie Portman can’t do accents to save her life. Her attempt at an English one here is laughable. Witness: Scripted line: You would have a bastard, and I would be a whore. Line as read by Natalie Portman: You would hov a bossturd, and I would be a hoe-ah. Ugh. And, sadly, Scarlett Johansson doesn’t fare much better. Why someone thought these two would be perfect for this project is beyond me. Was all the talent in the UK busy on casting day? And were all the dialect coaches on strike?? The entire thing felt very much like a misguided vanity project for them both. Storywise, the film follows the tumultuous love/hate triangle between King Henry VIII (Eric Bana), and the ladies Boleyn: shrill, annoying, bratty Anne and her comparatively demure but dull-as-dishwater sister, Mary. The girls’ father, eager to secure his family’s future by winning favor with the King, makes a deal with the smarmy Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey) to shuttle Anne off to be Henry’s newest mistress. Score! But when things don’t work out between the two, dad sends newly married Mary off to take her sister’s place. Much to everyone’s surprise, the King grows to love Mary...but when she gets pregnant and can no longer partake of the sex, Anne gets the booty call back to the palace, where she promptly becomes a conniving, evil wench. As if to emphasize this, she wears a “B” around her neck for the entire film. Sadly, at no point does pushover Mary point to it and ask whether it stands for “bee-yatch.” Anyway, the film then devolves (further) into a boring, un-sexy power struggle as Anne, claws out, tries to ascend the throne while everyone in the audience wonders what the hell Henry ever saw in this irritating shrew. If he’s going to completely turn his life, and his country, upside down because he’s so hopelessly besotted with a woman, shouldn’t that woman at least be moderately alluring or beguiling or seductive or hot? Portman’s Anne is none of those things. Meanwhile, Johansson is once again left to play the doe-eyed waif (see also: Girl With the Pearl Earring), wistfully longing for love and being repeatedly beat down in the process, and Bana just stomps around the picture huffing and puffing and being generally loutish and unlikable. Doesn’t it sound like a winning combination all around? Add to that the fact that Bana doesn’t have an iota of chemistry with either of his leading ladies and you’ve got two very, very tedious hours. The source material for this project is notoriously Harlequin-y, so it really shouldn’t be a surprise that the resulting film is equally hollow. Everything in it is one-note, from the performances to the storytelling, and even the fancy-pants costumes aren’t enough to elevate it above borderline straight-to-video quality. In fact, it probably would have gone straight to video had it featured lesser-known actors...so, to that end, I suppose Portman and Johansson can consider this a mission accomplished. Too bad the same cannot be said for their work in it. |
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In this big-screen adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s trashy
period-romance novel, Kristin Scott Thomas co-stars as Lady Elizabeth
Boleyn, mother to Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson).
Her character spends what limited screen time she has—and, believe
me, it is limited—observing the scandalous proceedings with a
mixture of disdain and horror. After watching the movie, I couldn’t
help but wonder if art was imitating life in Thomas’s performance,
given the dreadful work turned in by the American actresses trying, and
failing, to be British. And regal. And interesting. I kind of want to
believe that Thomas, pretty much the only actor in the film worth
watching, regarded Portman and Johannson with the same degree of
disgust during the shoot.
