This movie is overblown, unfocused, and self-congratulatory. It has nothing interesting to say about anything we do not already know. Anyone who has taken a high school world history class will know how it turns out, and anyone who cares about historical accuracy will be sorely disappointed. It suffers from poor writing, heavy-handed direction, and an unnecessarily flashy production.
It is a historical romance in the vein of films like Cleopatra and Shakespeare in Love. The love story here, however, makes no sense. It is not believable because we know these people will never be together, and we do not care because these people do not seem to love each other that much anyway. The romance hinges on a preposterous love triangle that is more of a straight line through Walter Raleigh, played by Clive Owen.
Cate Blanchett, returning for a second go at depicting the Virgin Queen, plays Elizabeth on the cusp of a holy war with Spain; however, she becomes preoccupied with Raleigh's charm and sense of adventure. Blanchett does fine work, but we've seen this character before, and like the overdone sets and annoyingly anachronistic music, it seems quite unnecessary. Owen is always good, but he just seems bored with the meandering plot line and nonsensical character arcs. Abbie Cornish plays the woman for whom Raleigh falls, and she is passable but not spectacular.
There is nothing really spectacular here at all. Under normal circumstances, that would not be a fair criticism, but this movie tries so hard to impress the audience that it just overwhelms us with too much of something that is not that good of a thing. It is showy and grandiose in all of the worst possible ways. It retains none of the passion and grace of the first film and has so much style that the little substance it does have is lost or unimportant. Director Shekhar Kapur would have been better off settling for the success, on just about every level, of Elizabeth and not trying to recapture it with this far inferior effort.
See it?
No.
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