The Other Boleyn Girl

First off, let me say I am not a fan of Philippa Gregory, mainly due to her blatant disregard for history (although she claims to do extensive research for her novels, she uses no primary sources (first rule of historical research = use primary sources) and her secondary sources (which from reading the book, she appears to have only skimmed over) are often outdated or don't stand up to the test of time). I watched the movie mainly to see the costumes (I'm a Tudor period fanatic) and to see if it would be better or worse than the book.

The Tudor period is a fascinating time, and it doesn't need to be changed or altered in order to make it more interesting. There's plenty of love, sex, betrayal, political scheming, etc. so I'm not sure why PG felt the need to completely alter the story so much.

I won't go into all of the historical inaccuracies here, if I did, I would be here all night. Besides, there are many other amazon reviewers who are better-spoken than me and have far more knowledge of the Tudor period than I do (I'm only a student), and they have written some wonderful reviews pointing out errors (head on over to the TOBG book page, or check out forums on IMDB).

My main problem with this movie was that it seemed much more like a TV Movie (Lifetime channel anybody?) than a Hollywood film with well-known, highly-paid actors and actresses. The Henry/Mary relationship was almost non-existent, they have a few sex scenes, but nothing to show that they might have actually cared for one another. Henry and Mary have TWO very short conversations before they sleep together. And this is supposed to be our heroine, who has fallen in love? This is preposterous even to romance novel readers. There is no character development or relationship development between the beginning of Henry and Mary's affair and Mary conceiving. So when Anne comes back and "steals" Henry away from Mary while she is pregnant, do we really feel that bad for Mary? Not really, since we haven't seen anything to show us that Mary is in love (at least in the novel there was an actual emotional relationship, one-dimensional as it was).

The one main thing that *really* put me off of this film was the rape scene with Henry and Anne. Henry certainly was not a wonderful guy, history has clearly shown us this, but is this scene necessary? As far as history goes, Anne held off Henry for many years, so a rape is very unlikely (not to mention she wasn't pregnant when she and Henry married secretly (winter 1532, second ceremony in London January 1533, Elizabeth born Sept 1533)). I'm not really sure if this scene is here to show us that "you'll get what's coming to you" if you act like a shrew, or if it's supposed to make us feel a hint of sympathy for Anne. Yes Henry and Anne's relationship (obviously) fell apart, but it fell apart over a period of years, not months. *SPOILER ALERT* Also, the ending with Mary storming into the castle and grabbing Elizabeth from her caretakers and walking out with her seems pretty preposterous. Henry had gotten rid of Anne, but he still did show regard for his children and made sure they were properly raised. Snatching Elizabeth, especially after the king has warned you he will not tolerate you, your pleas to him, or your family anymore, seems like asking for some major punishment to me. *END SPOILER*

Strangely enough, considering that Ms. Gregory considers herself a "feminist author," the only characters remotely resembling anything feminist was the Boleyn mother, Elizabeth, who encourages her daughters to be well-educated and shows her objection to the Boleyn-Howard males pimping out their daughters for political gain (gains which usually fell to the males), and Katherine of Aragon, who acts honorably and respectably at all times. I don't think these are the characters we are meant to admire, but Anne is made out to be a self-serving, conniving shrew and Mary is too meek and mousy to be likeable.

One major (non-historical) error: Mary is married to William Carey, but midway through the film William Stafford asks her to marry him and leave court with him. Um, what happened to Mary's husband (He died of the sweating sickness, but the film never shows this)?

I was hoping for some great costumes from this film, and I was very disappointed. The fabrics were very modern (some of them looked like 1970s curtains) and seemed very out of place. Natalie Portman basically wore the same version of a dress, just in different colored fabrics, through the majority of the film (same for Scarlett). Tudor fashion is amazing; the costume designers could have shown so much more variety with the costumes. The accents of Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson were incredibly bad. Portman's accent seems to have gotten worse from when she did V for Vendetta. Also, at times certain scenes were so dark that I had to readjust the settings on my screen (which I've never had a problem with).

The one positive thing about the film is that they chose to leave out the incest plot-line that was very strongly suggested in the book.

Those of us over-40 folks remember fondly the great BBC mini-series of yesterday, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R, incredibly acted and scripted, albeit lacking in Hollywood glossiness. The Other Boleyn Girl delivers on the gloss but the acting is mediocre at best, the writing several steps below mediocre. I rather like Natalie Portman, but her variable English accent was distracting, to say the least. (Obviously there is some logic in casting English actors in such roles.) I didn't find Eric Bana particularly appealing (maybe we hetero males aren't easily swayed by an actor's looks), and the rape of Anne is unhistorical and was obviously included to spice up a rather dull movie. (Tip to movie-makers: sex can actually be very titillating when it's just suggested, and off-screen.) After seeing this movie on DVD, I found myself dragging my old Six Wives of Henry VIII tapes out of the closet and relishing the great acting and the intelligent scripts, and the great actress Dorothy Tutin as Anne is a pretty tough act to follow. I really cannot recommend The Other Boleyn Girl as entertainment, much less as history. If scriptwriters want to sex up historical dramas, fine, but at least give us some credible dialogue and some actresses who can sound consistently English.

Many times whilst watching this movie, I found myself wishing I was watching the much better 'Anne of the 1000 Days'. 'The Other Boleyn Girl' is a travesty of a movie.

Scarlett Johansen seemed to have the acting range of a cold, dead fish. Natalie Portman did better, but frankly, she was fighting a losing battle against very poor scripting. And Eric Bana...well, as an Aussie, I have of course taken the oath of allegience to always adore Eric Bana, who like Hugh Jackman is one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet. But Eric has a very strong accent, of the type that many people who hail from Melbourne's northern suburbs do, and he just can't seem to hide it, no matter what. When he tries to sound English, it just makes me cringe. I was almost expecting King Henry VIII to crack open a beer, throw another shrimp on the barbie and call Anne 'a beaut sheila'. Ugh! Sorry, Eric, you're a top bloke, but I can say with all honesty that Amy Winehouse would have made a better King of England, even with the problem of trying to get a crown on over the wig.

The film made me angry because it was so historically inaccurate. No film better deserved to have the 'This movie is a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any persons or events ever etc.' disclaimer appear in its closing credits. Worse, I sensed a strong bias from the writer (the writer of the book this was based on, assumedly), in that she seemed to be living vicariously through the character of Mary, and wanted her to be all things good, whilst her sister Anne had to appear as all things bad, assumedly to make Mary appear even better by comparison.

And as for the scene with Anne and her brother (and anyone who's seen the movie will know exactly what scene I mean), well, that was just ICKY!

I like my historical dramas to have at least some resemblance to actual history. And I like them to seem realistic and believable, not just like soap operas or bad romance novels, with inane dialogue and two-dimensional, illogically-constructed characters. I mean, in this movie, King Henry VIII is a thin, fairly stupid, silent and moody bloke who can be manipulated by the most transparent of women's wiles, who makes decisions on the merest hint of a whim, without a real thought of his own in his pretty little head. If King Henry VIII had been as much of a moron in real life as he was scripted to be in this movie, I doubt he would have survived beyond the cradle, let alone to become one of the most powerful, notorious, world-changing kings in history.

Oh, and one final thing -- if you're going to spend nearly half a movie boring us viewers by showing women in bed either in labour or miscarrying, at least get the details right. Elizabeth was a redhead, yet for some reason, the baby playing her at her birth had BLACK hair!

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 230 reviews  3.0 out of 5 stars