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cainemilton
Reviews
William & Catherine: A Royal Romance (2011)
Dearie me
The good:
To be fair, most of the talent is not bad at all (considering mostly Americans playing arch English-voiced icons, which is usually – Ms Streep excepted – disastrous).
The bad:
The scrip is ridiculous and philistine in the extreme. Why not at least check a few basic facts for such a biopic? How can the most basic genealogy be so difficult for American production teams to fathom? E.g. In a scene near the end we have Prince Phillip in bed with the Queen (BTW it's been publicly noted for decades that they have separate sleeping-chambers, remember when world news covered the Queen's sleeping-chamber being broken into by a disturbed intruder and she was left to deal with him entirely alone?) referring to 'the king, your great uncle Edward ...' Hello? King Edward VII was the Queen's great GRANDFATHER, not UNCLE. King Edward the VIII was her UNCLE, but not GREAT uncle. No great uncle of the Queen's was a King Edward.
When yanks try to do English royal stories of historical significance they make such unforgivably clumsy blunders. Just like the Tudors series (aimed at US viewers), where our current English Royal family's ancestral link with the Tudor Dynasty – sister of Henry VIII Princess Margaret Tudor – is morphed into her sister Princess Mary but keeps the same forename (because they insultingly assume viewers are too dumb to follow a true story with 2 Princess Mary's involved, i.e. the other P Mary in it being Henry VIII's daughter rather to sister ), and is then married off to some fictional European monarch, quite erasing the facts explaining our present royalty's proper right to rule, which are that Princess Margaret Tudor married King James Stuart IV of Scotland, hence our royalty's Stuart lineage which, in turn, takes them back to the Tudors, whose daughter Margaret married into the Stuarts. Furthermore, the actress playing Catherine is called 'royal' in IMDb trivia page, but she's not royal at all, she's from a titled family, sure. But when did every titled Brit family become 'royal'?
The verdict:
Really guys, the film's awful music aside (best kept nowadays for a sliced-bread commercial or whatever), this vital genealogy stuff usually central to these tales is not rocket science (millions use Ancestry.com and mange OK). If you're going to spend megabucks why not save yourselves the global embarrassment and do 5 minutes' basic research (which you oughtn't need do anyway if you had even the most elementary schooling)?
The Iron Lady (2011)
Disappointing, over-hyped film - shopping centre impersonations.
I was looking forward to seeing this, but was disappointed to find that it is a painfully bad piece of work. Filmmaking at its worst – poorly structured, disproportionate, over-long and over-acted. Nauseatingly too much of the archetypal batty old woman locked away in the attic schmaltz and not nearly enough life documentation (such as her career before politics, which was extensive and scientific). Streep, like anyone else, can dollop on any amount of prosthetic coverage and embody anyone at all - her voice is quite good, although no better than any street impersonator's of the same character, for anyone unfortunate enough to have lived in the UK during the Thatcher years. I've seen no worse drag queen impersonations, and similar efforts rife in '80s British comedy sketch shows and even shopping centre promotions – the 'Thatcher-gram' springs immediately to mind. Frankly, this was no classier than that other over-acted impersonation movie that killed Dunaway's career at its peak - Mommie Dearest. Streep, of course, can afford, at this late stage, to let this happen to her resume. As much as I personally disliked the real Thatcher and her politics, and thereby have no reason to feel insulted by any treatment of her, this movie was an undignified, gratuitous, inhumane hack at a living woman, presently in a nursing home with dementia, who will almost certainly get to watch it. If Helen Mirren's The Queen had been so awful it would have been publicly slammed – this is not being because it portrays a hated character without the power to speak back. This movie is cowardly, below the belt, cheap political schadenfreude about a now frail, obscure old lady. Maudlin in parts, nasty in others, but all round crass, corny, confused and dull dull dull. Shame on Merryl for doing it.