Posted: 03/03/2008

The Other Boleyn Girl

(2008)

by Hank Yuloff

Next Oscar season, when the nominations come out for Best Costume, remember Hank’s Rule #6 about picking Oscar tm winners: Always pick the “Period Piece About England in the Time of the Tudors.” So why is my first paragraph about this movie dealing with costumes? Well, as much as I thought that The Other Boleyn Girl was going to be an early 2008 gem of a movie, I find myself giving the highest marks to the work of Sandy Powell (Shakespeare In Love—Oscar, The Aviator—Oscar, Gangs of New York—nominated, Orlando—nominated) doing what she does best.

I thought this was going to be a tremendous movie. My thoughts began with the casting of Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson as Anne and Mary Boleyn, two sisters who were sent by their family to bewitch and beguile King Henry VIII in order to raise the social and financial status of their family. This story has been told many times, most recently on Showtime in The Tudors. That show did not have the same wonderful costumes, but the incredible amount of nudity made up for it. No, I was not expecting to see Ms. Portman and Ms. Johansson in the nude; they are not, after all, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. But I was hoping for more. Even without the skin, Portman (Closer, Star Wars prequels, Garden State) and Johansson (Lost in Translation, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Prestige) are two of the best young actresses working today. They are the ones who will become the Meryl Streeps and Cate Blanchetts of tomorrow because they are almost there now.

The movie clocks in at just under two hours and feels like every minute of it. It relies on the viewer to have seen some of those past Henry and Anne stories and be familiar with the story in order to fill in what is left out of picture or done silently on camera. I am 24 hours after seeing the film and still can not tell you why I am not a fan of this film. It was not the acting because joining the two above mentioned actresses, a cast including Eric Bana (the lead from Munich) as Henry and Kristin Scott Thomas (Gosford Park) as the girls mother.

So I guess I am going to have to pin this one on director Justin Chadwick who has directed quite a bit of television (nothing in the slightest bit memorable and nothing at all since 2005) but this is his first motion picture and I am guessing we will not see much in the future.

Put this one in the memory bank for next January in the costume division but unless you see The Other Boleyn Girl on cable, you should probably turn to some other film.

Hank Yuloff is a film critic in Los Angeles.

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