Duchess, The

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is not one of those delightful movies based on a Jane Austen novel. It is about hard realists, constrained in a stifling system and using whatever weapons they can command.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Thoroughly populist and middlebrow, full of all the high wigs, thick powder, perfect diction, and straightforward dialogue that define bodice-ripping prestige pictures about silently suffering souls.

Time Richard Schickel

The players are uniformly good, but a special word must be said for Fiennes, whose portrayal of physical awkwardness and painful taciturnity never begs either for laughs or for sympathy.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Even surrounded by all this quality work, Ralph Fiennes, who plays William Cavendish, the fifth duke of Devonshire, the most powerful man in England next to the king, walks off with the picture.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

An uncommonly well-crafted historical feminist tearjerker--both anti-patriarchal and a monument to motherhood.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This is scandal-mongering fun that also lays bare the deforming power of the male aristocracy.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

It tells the amazing, but mostly true, story of a late-18th century aristocrat who made an indelible mark on English society akin to that of her direct descendant, Lady Diana.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

If you're fond of wigs, you may be in heaven. If you're more interested in Whigs, you may wish the movie had dug deeper under the lovely powdered surface of Lady Georgiana Spencer.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

While I much liked The Duchess, this portrait feels unfinished.

TV Guide Ken Fox

perfectly serviceable costume drama.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Princess Diana's antecedent, both genetically and figuratively, was a beautiful and glamorous duchess named Georgiana Spencer. Like her descendant, her charm and vivacity captivated England.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Fiennes speaks with his body what the script cannot formulate about what it's like to be a man apart. The actor creates particulars of time, space, class, and personality with one crook of a finger, one twist of a wrist. I call that nobility of craft; he's the actors' prince.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's Knightley who makes The Duchess a royal treat.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Keira Knightley is a terrific choice to play the 18th century socialite.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

tThere's life at the center of The Duchess, in the form of Keira Knightley. She carries the weight of the movie around her effortlessly.

Newsweek David Ansen

For a number of reasons The Duchess isn't all it could have been. It's fun, but falls short of fabulous.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Provided you don't take it seriously, it makes for an addictively entertaining diversion that's as hard to stop watching as the books are to stop reading.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Ultimately, though, it's unfortunate that the movie tries to make so many oblique comparisons to more modern tragedy (paparazzi with sketchbooks; yes, we get it!), since Georgiana's life seems fascinating enough on its own.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Fans of period drama will find things to like about The Duchess; it's not as ludicrous as "The Other Boleyn Girl," for instance, and it's not overly long or ponderous.

Chicago Tribune Tasha Robinson

Taken in isolation from the unsatisfying story, the performances are powerful--Knightley’s vivacious, wounded romantic does a great deal to carry the film on sheer personality, while Fiennes is a subtle master at projecting banked menace through his seeming detached ennui.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

At a certain point, The Duchess stops attending to the topiary and becomes a women's melodrama instead.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

As for true-love Charles, he would ascend to the Prime Minister's office, and then rise again to even greater heights: They named the tea after him. Indeed, that may be the smartest way to see this flick, curled up on your sofa with a cup of Earl Grey -- just make sure it's as decaffeinated as what you're watching.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

A rousing period drama with all the familiar trimmings: gorgeous costumes, palatial settings and romantic intrigue.

Variety Justin Chang

A serviceable picture that offers all the sumptuous visual pleasures of a historical costume drama, yet little in the way of actual history.

NPR Bob Mondello

Director Saul Dibb, presumably knowing that this is pretty standard stuff for a costume epic, occupies us not just with the usual visuals -- of his star drifting through exquisitely furnished estates, draped in rich silks and brocades -- but also with some intriguingly offbeat sights.

Washington Post John Anderson

It's too bad there's not more substance to The Duchess, because there's lots of acting and, as is required of a Brit-styled period piece, lushness galore.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The problem isn't the history that the filmmakers leave in, but how much they leave out.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

As a tale of mature self-sacrifice, the movie would be almost unbearably moving were it not for Knightley's insubstantial performance, which allows her to be fatally upstaged by Ralph Fiennes.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It has impeccable production values but feels like a "Masterpiece Theater" production of a Harlequin romance novel.

Christian Science Monitor Robert Koehler

A lumbering number that takes its identity as a costume drama quite literally.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

It’s a curiously inert, workmanlike production: a whole lot of pomp and incircumstance.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Instead of scintillation, the movie gives us a succession of discrete set pieces, as if the action takes place in rooms but not in the halls connecting them.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

An overstuffed, intellectually underbaked portrait of a poor little rich girl.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Everything is predictable three scenes in advance, and it's all stale, stuck, stolid.