| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
An absorbing, exciting costume drama that works as a historical romance, a family tragedy and a showcase for its young stars.
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| 75 |
ReelViews
The result is an entertainingly sudsy trip through early 16th century English history.
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| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
A classy romantic cocktail distinguished by its tart yet breezy bite.
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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
An enjoyable movie with an entertaining angle on a hard-to-resist period of history.
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| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
A richly appointed period piece, it features kingly tantrums, mistresses, bodices, roaring fireplaces, incest, and mutton. It also features sharply enunciated, period-perfect dialogue in which nary a contraction can be heard.
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| 70 |
LA Weekly
Stuck for years playing young women who are the idealized object of male desire (Portman and Johansson)-- flaw-free and, in Johansson's case, barely conscious -- they come alive in The Other Boleyn Girl, as if being bound up in costumer Sandy Powell's exquisite gowns has freed them from the tighter constraints of their own beauty.
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| 70 |
Variety
A sexy, good-looking political bodice-ripper with an almost flawless cast at the top of its game.
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| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Works both as an engagingly sordid meditation on protofeminism and contemporized sisterhood set in a time and a place where either/or were grounds for, at the very least, defenestration.
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| 67 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
The film looks terrific, all Vermeer-style light/dark interplay and sleek design. And Portman is fantastic as the tempestuous Anne.
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| 63 |
Premiere
Andrew Grant
Two-hours of trashy eye-candy that, while fast and loose with the truth, functions as a perfectly adequate divertissement in a time of year when studios tend to unleash their worst.
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| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
Jessica Reaves
Eric Bana doesn’t have much to do as Henry VIII except play the monarch as an overgrown spoiled brat. He is, however, awfully nice to look at.
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| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Feels less like an epic drama about power and the power of love than an episode of a Masterpiece Theatre mini-series.
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| 63 |
TV Guide
It's a terrific showcase for battling Boleyn babes Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.
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| 63 |
Rolling Stone
In Portman's dynamic performance you can see strength and vulnerability warring for Anne's soul. In this bedroom view of history, it's that image that sticks.
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| 60 |
Empire
A rather titillating take on a racy historical novel, this is perhaps too ambitious in intent. More time, or more pruning (perhaps they should just have focused on The Boleyn girl), would have produced a richer and more enjoyable film.
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| 60 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Shot in high definition and filmed at many historic locations, the film somehow still lacks the splendor of an epic, and its urgency to get on with the next plot point leaves much unexplained while context goes out the window.
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| 60 |
Slate
Dana Stevens
For a movie whose story hinges almost entirely on sex, The Other Boleyn Girl is disappointingly demure.
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| 50 |
New York Magazine
A brisk feminist melodrama that is, historically speaking, a load of wank. It has the feel of a game of “telephone,” in which information is progressively mangled.
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| 50 |
Charlotte Observer
If you're indifferent to silly revisions of history and bad acting, you may enjoy The Other Boleyn Girl. I'm not, and I didn't.
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| 50 |
Miami Herald
Think "Cruel Intentions" in period costume, or better yet, Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette," which managed to take its subject matter lightly and seriously at the same time.
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| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
What might have been delicious trash lacks the courage of its trashy convictions, and the result is high-born melodrama with the juice boiled out, so much dry cabbage on fine-china plate.
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| 50 |
Chicago Reader
It's neither sexy enough to qualify as good trash nor serious enough to pass for history.
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| 50 |
New York Daily News
Chadwick builds a brisk pace and sweeping scope that initially grab our interest. But this Anne's sole motivations are sex and greed, and the wild rumors that were designed to destroy her are treated here as gospel.
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| 50 |
USA Today
Can't quite figure out what it wants to be.
At times it strains to be a stately period drama about 16th-century political intrigue. Then it devolves into soap opera muck and emerges as a rather tame bodice ripper.
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| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Not content to be a mildly diverting royal bodice-ripper, it spirals out of control into the kind of overwrought dramaturgy that's out of its league.
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| 42 |
Baltimore Sun
This rendering of the turbulent second marriage of England's King Henry VIII proves too heavy-footed for the old movie two-step of setting up a morality tale, then exploiting it for heat and titillation.
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| 40 |
Washington Post
Even by its own standards, the movie becomes increasingly macabre and ludicrous as Anne's machinations get the better of her, and everyone, including the audience, is left feeling shattered, shaken and vaguely unclean for having participated in all this.
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| 40 |
The New York Times
Forced to compete for kingly favors, the women were soon rivals, a contest that, in its few meagerly entertaining moments, recalls the sisterly love in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”
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| 40 |
Wall Street Journal
After covering much of its ground at a stylish canter, The Other Boleyn Girl finishes at a plod.
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| 38 |
Boston Globe
Not good enough to take seriously and, sadly, not bad enough to be any fun.
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| 38 |
New York Post
It's pretty hard to make a dull movie about Henry VIII and his complicated love life, but The Other Boleyn Girl, a failed Oscar contender, manages to do just that, with yawns to spare.
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| 33 |
Portland Oregonian
The all-description storytelling leads to other problems, too, the worst being that "Boleyn" suffers from the same affliction as "The Golden Compass," where you're told about interesting stuff happening elsewhere in another movie you'd much rather be watching.
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| 30 |
Salon.com
The most sterile of bodice-rippers, a genteel soap opera in which the sex and intrigue are so muted, so tasteful, that they practically blow off the screen in a scattering of dust.
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| 10 |
Film Threat
Matthew Sorrento
The falling blade is the only element not missing the mark in this film. I wanted to call for the beheading after Act One, and spare the audience instead.
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