The Other Boleyn Girl

Anne and I went to see The Other Boleyn Girl the other night. Philippa Gregory’s novels are a guilty pleasure of mine, so I was happy to take in the adaptation. Plus, between Marie Antoinette and this, Anne and I seem to have started something of a tradition by seeing all the not-so-great, fluffy, girly, historical movies together.

The movie is fairly loyal to Gregory’s novel and follows the two Boleyn daughters, Mary and Anne, as their family plays them as pawns in a game of real-life royal chess. Mary is newly married, so when the girls’ evilly ambitious uncle sees an opportunity to provide King Henry with a mistress, it’s Anne who’s thrust under his nose. He takes a shine to Mary instead, and she becomes his lover, husband be damned. When Henry becomes bored of Mary, he starts showing affection to Anne instead, and the rest is history.

In the interest of focusing on the two sisters, the movie glosses over enormous historical plot points (the King abandons Catholicism and ousts Catherine of Aragon in a single scene). But there was far too little emotion behind their rivalry. Scarlett Johannson plays Mary like a slack-jawed innocent with a single open-mouthed expression (you’d think she was catching flies instead of a king). Natalie Portman does better, but she’s not given much to work with. The script doesn’t give any character more than a single dimension.

I have to say, I was pretty disappointed. I went in expecting this to be fluff, so I wasn’t looking for anything life altering. But this was really pretty dismal. And the somewhat girl-power-ish and definitely lame history lesson at the end didn’t do the movie any favors.