Ah, the romance of courtly love ““ pert British accents, richly adorned British bosoms and frantic love triangles resulting in beheading. So it’s really a shame that while “The Other Boleyn Girl,” based on the best-selling novel by Philippa Gregory, is a fun spectacle, it’s also unintentionally funny in all the wrong places.
Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman) is the sassy, conniving daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn (Mark Rylance), a vapid, spineless fellow ““ traits that combine dangerously with his social ambition. The shy, humble elder of the Boleyn daughters is Mary, blandly played by Scarlett Johansson.
At the urging of the token creepy uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, the Boleyn family has the opportunity to dangle Anne in front a son-hungry, King Henry VIII (Eric Bana), who is on the hunt for a sexually stimulating mistress. But, uh-oh! Gentlemen must prefer blondes, because it is the newlywed Mary who Henry really wants. So he invites the whole Boleyn gang to the Royal Court ““ all for Mary’s, ahem, “company.”
Of course, sibling jealousy emerges on Anne’s part and she begins her bold power plays. Things get even more twisted when the once-skeptical Mary actually starts to fall in love with Henry ““ the perfect recipe for melodramatic acting and tacky dialogue.
Inconsistencies in the script make parts of the film jarring and just plain odd. One of the central themes in the story is the importance of a male heir not only to the royal family, but in English society as a whole. But this, strangely, does not even remotely carry through to the relationship (or lack thereof) between Sir Thomas and his son George (Jim Sturgess), culminating with the father’s bizarrely deadpan reaction to George’s twisted fate.
The Duke of Norfolk delivers some (accidentally) hilarious lines. When confronting Anne about the plan to woo Henry, he asks her, “Do you accept the challenge?” as if she were a game-show contestant. And after Mary spends the night with Henry for the first time at court, he asks (in front of the whole Boleyn family nonetheless), “Well, did he have you?” Every question is gruff, blunt and just straight-up angry, even if that wasn’t the fitting tone for the context. His uptightness rendered him the one who needed the mistress ““ not Henry.
The costumes are quite a spectacle, especially with Henry’s enormous, jewel-encrusted fur coat, shellacked with silky fabric, making him look like a Renaissance version of Notorious B.I.G. The coat matches his attitude ““ P.I.M.P.
“The Other Boleyn Girl” gets points for having a juicy plot and pretty things to look at, but any depth is overshadowed by melodrama and elements as irregular as Henry VIII’s wives.
-Devon McReynolds
E-mail McReynolds at dmcreynolds@media.ucla.edu.