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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Universal Pictures
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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
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| WRITTEN BY: |
Michael Hirst
William Nicholson
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| DIRECTED BY: |
Shekhar Kapur
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| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 5, 2008
Theatrical: October 12, 2007
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| 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...
75
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.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
An enticingly risque saga of the 16th century monarch.
70
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.
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Blanchett commands the screen as she commands the royal navy. Her unforced majesty makes a so-so film worth watching.
63
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.
63
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.
63
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.
60
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.
58
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.
58
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.
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Favors pageantry over substance.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
It is a silly film about serious matters.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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."
50
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
It's common in Hollywood to describe a disappointing film this way: "Well, it certainly looks great!"
50
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.
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
A shrill and silly affair, bordering at times on camp.
50
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.
50
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.
42
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.
42
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?"
40
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.
40
Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
Kapur and his screenwriter have little interest here in maintaining even a dollop of historical accuracy.
40
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
An unholy mixture of the banal and the bombastic.
40
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Might have been a lavish, silly entertainment. In places it comes close, but no sheaf of tobacco.
40
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
The original “Elizabeth” was visually lush and quite engaging, but this is a sprawling mess.
40
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.
33
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.
30
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 48 User Votes
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