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Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Universal Pictures


6.0

based on 35 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 46 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for violence, some sexuality and nudity

Starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Samantha Morton, and Abbie Cornish

Elizabeth: The Golden Age finds Queen Elizabeth facing bloodlust for her throne and familial betrayal. Growing keenly aware of the changing religious and political tides of late-16th-century Europe, Elizabeth finds her rule openly challenged by the Spanish King Philip II, who with his powerful army and sea-dominating armada is determined to restore England to Catholicism. Preparing to go to war to defend her empire, Elizabeth struggles to balance ancient royal duties with an unexpected vulnerability in her love for Raleigh. But he remains forbidden for a queen who has sworn body and soul to her country. Unable and unwilling to pursue her love, Elizabeth encourages her favorite lady-in-waiting, Bess, to befriend Raleigh to keep him near. But this strategy forces Elizabeth to observe the growing intimacy of the other two. As she charts her course abroad, her trusted advisor, Sir Francis Walsingham, continues his masterful puppetry of Elizabeth's court at home to end her campaign to solidify absolute power. (Universal Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Michael Hirst William Nicholson
DIRECTED BY:	Shekhar Kapur
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 5, 2008 Theatrical: October 12, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	114 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / France

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Expect a fast-paced, beautifully mounted and well-acted soap opera with overripe dialogue that plays fast and loose with history - just like they did in the '30s, '40s and '50s - and you won't come away disappointed.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

An enticingly risque saga of the 16th century monarch.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Cate Blanchett returns to the role that made her a star, and though this sequel to "Elizabeth" (1998) is less defensible as history, as florid costume drama it's just as entertaining.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Blanchett commands the screen as she commands the royal navy. Her unforced majesty makes a so-so film worth watching.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Weighed down by its splendor. There are scenes where 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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Elizabeth: The Golden Age lacks the intricate plotting that characterized its predecessor. The screenplay is more action-oriented but not as smart, and some of the dialogue is downright cheesy.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Historians might demand a little more history from Elizabeth: The Golden Age. But soap opera loyalists could hardly ask for more soap.

Empire Will Lawrence

Over-indulgent and melodramatic, as is the nature of artistic mythmaking, The Golden Age will beguile and repel in equal measure. The performances are supreme, although some viewers may struggle to reconcile the director’s epic intentions.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

It says a lot about this movie that the most arresting character in it is Mary, whom Morton unsurprisingly endows with a fanatical combination of narcissism and rage.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Too bad Kapur's new, glittering sequel also shows up feeling prematurely old, square, and cautious. A production of exquisitely complicated wigs and expensively grand wide shots, it pauses often to admire its own beauty, leery of messing with previous success.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Favors pageantry over substance.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Ms. Blanchett can do no wrong, and does none here, though the movie around her, a popcorn-worthy sequel to the 1998 "Elizabeth," often lapses into opacity or grandiosity.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

History gets short shrift from screenwriters William Nicholson and Michael Hirst -- starting with the not insignificant fact that in 1585, Elizabeth was 52 years old – but Kapur is clearly more interested in spectacle and soap opera than dusty old facts.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Squanders the opportunity to give us a telling glimpse of the woman behind the ruff. Instead, the costume drama is all gilt and opulence.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

It is a silly film about serious matters.

Slate Dana Stevens

If you go in fully prepared for the cinematic equivalent of a grocery-store novel, this unnecessary sequel to "Elizabeth" (1998) has its pleasures.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

It’s intentionally playful and an inadvertent giggle, an overripe melodrama that’s by turns a bodice-ripper, a cloak-and-dagger thriller and a serious-minded historical drama with dubious contemporary overtones.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Despite good performances all around, particularly the ever-brilliant Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a gilded ornament, speculative and uninterested in much besides this queen's matters of heart.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Cate Blanchett can do anything, even play Bob Dylan, but she can't save this creaky sequel to her star-making 1998 biopic of Elizabeth I.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

This 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."

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's common in Hollywood to describe a disappointing film this way: "Well, it certainly looks great!"

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The Golden Age is packed with distractions. But the biggest of all is the story itself, which works so mightily to tarnish the queen at its core.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A shrill and silly affair, bordering at times on camp.

Time Richard Schickel

It's a faux epic -- swell costumes, historically authentic settings, a certain amount of bustle and skulking, but very little dramatically gripping activity.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Despite its title, Shekhar Kapur's new film resembles tarnished copper, its dull focus more appropriate for an episode of “One Tree Hill” than a biopic of one of Britain's greatest monarchs.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The best you can say about Owen is that no actor has looked better in thigh-high boots and puffed-out britches.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Blanchett miraculously gives a good performance, even when saddled with lines like this one, to Clive Owen's Sir Walter Raleigh: "In another world, could you have loved me?"

Variety Todd McCarthy

Without the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett continue the role that launched her to stardom, there would be little to recommend this latest of many cinematic and television accounts of the celebrated monarch's life.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

Kapur and his screenwriter have little interest here in maintaining even a dollop of historical accuracy.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

An unholy mixture of the banal and the bombastic.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Might have been a lavish, silly entertainment. In places it comes close, but no sheaf of tobacco.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

The original “Elizabeth” was visually lush and quite engaging, but this is a sprawling mess.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Gives new meaning to "costume drama" in that it is a drama primarily about costumes. But the drama is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the temple.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

So instead of history and drama, we get images, many of them striking but none of them memorable, and noise that deafens until no sense can escape. The events beg for Shakespearean gravity, but the only tragedy here is that so little could be made of so much.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Overdresses and ultimately abandons what drew us to its 1998 predecessor in the first place: an intimate embrace with history.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 46 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andrea M. gave it a5:
Ludicrous screenplay. Only Cate Blanchett shouldn't be embarrassed to have been involved.

Timur R. gave it a10:
This highly underrated film is actually quite brilliantly directed with one of the best performances of all time. I am sure the studios cut it as it could have used another hour. However, this talk of being historically accurate is simply unfair. I don't know of any movies that are historically accurate. They are not lectures, they are art! If you want history, listen to some lectures or read a book. This is to give you the experience of the time. And as for bombastic, overripe and all the other nonsense comments, well I guess if a film shows some emotion, it is too much for our cynical age.

Jill P. gave it a4:
Patently silly from start to finish. The whole thing seems like an endlessly long perfume ad, complete with billowing gauze and guttering candles in nearly every scene. All style, no substance, a movie does not make.

Prins M. gave it a3:
The first one was awful. This is even worse.

Judy T gave it a2:
Waste of film.

Angelica H. gave it a7:
It was worth watching for the costumes alone. But the movie does not explore the queen herself and her own complexity as a human being. Too bad.

Frank M. gave it an8:
I had a great time watching this melodrama. The people who enjoyed the first one seem to dislike this one for being over the top and corny but forget that "Elizabeth" was pretty much the same.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age Universal Pictures

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Universal Pictures