The Queen (2006)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A lot of fun.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Am I missing something here? For all the awards this film won, and the amount of press it gained at the time of its release I sat down to watch it expecting something special.I was wrong. This film is slow, biased, and lacking in any sort of enjoyable qualities.There was so much fuss about Helen Mirren's striking accurate portrayal of The Queen and Michael Sheen's version of Tony Blair, but having seen both I'm still waiting to see what all the fuss was about.I did not enjoy this film. I thought it was poor.

The Queen made a promising start but as time went on and each event or milestone was portrayed it lost its film appeal. It felt more like a BBC documentary special rather than a feature film. Ironically the use of archive footage from the news stations acted to affirm that idea. As tension mounts later in the film over the Crown's inaction the second half seems more like a chore than a film to enjoy. The beauty that lies in historical films is how the film delivers the finish or result even though you already knew the outcome.The acting was first class and probably the strongest aspect of the film. Helen Mirren was very worthy of her best actress win as one never doubts that she is the queen and Michael Sheen did an excellent job as Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Queen is worth a watch but one shouldn't have high expectations. 7/10

The casting stands out first, just about every character is so like the real person it is like watching a documentary. and what they say is believable too. The queen of course, and the Duke, and Charles, and Blair the new prime minister and his wife. All great.The sad events of the era, the death in very suspicious circumstances of Diana, and then the problems of how the royals react is all here.A thought does occur to me, afterwards, that Blair's ambition to change and improve Great Britain seems to have been lost in the subsequent years. My guess is that Blair will now be regarded as just another...whatever, and who-cares. So much was promised?

This film deals with a character still alive and contemporary for us all: Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, one of the oldest monarchs in recent history and one of the most influential figures in the world. In this film, she faces the dramatic days following the death of Princess Diana. Directed by Stephen Frears, the film has script by Peter Morgan and has Helen Mirren in the title role.Princess Diana was, as long as she lived, one of the most powerful and influential figures of European royalty, helping to popularize and modernize the monarchy the same way that, decades earlier, Grace Kelly did. Even today, there are people with very different views of Diana. Some people idolized her, other despised her and didn't like the way that, allegedly, she manipulated yellow press. Ironically, even her death is subject of debate and doubts. However, most people agreed about the antipathy between herself and the Queen, her mother-in- law. The film deals with the difficulties of the monarch to react to the death of a woman she inwardly abhorred, and the danger that unpopularity represents today to the old monarchical gears.Helen Mirren surprised at the role of the British sovereign. She turned on her, gave her body, soul and life of an absolutely brilliant way, worthy of the Oscar for Best Leading Actress she won. She managed to give the public the image of a woman torn between what to do and to show, and what she really feels and wants. A woman educated to rule and not show weakness, keeping her composure under any circumstances and following the protocol, even when people demanded it to be broken. The film even shows one of the lesser known truths of this monarch, which is that of knowing how to drive, thanks to the period she spent as British Army auto mechanics. Michael Sheen also shone, in the role of Tony Blair, a smart prime minister who quickly realized what the Queen was slow to understand: that the will of the people was overlapping the state protocol.The makeup and costume work was at the highest level. The scenarios also helped to set up the characters and show the everyday life of British royalty, without falling into the cliché of the luxurious and impersonal rooms, usually found in royal palaces. The photograph fulfills its role with intelligence and the soundtrack, by Alexandre Desplat, is excellent and fits perfectly to the film.