Sunday, January 24, 2010

God Save the Queen

The Young Victoria
If you look at the books I normally review, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that I enjoy historical fiction. Unfortunately historical fiction movies (especially those about European Queens) tend not to be huge money makers. Which means whenever they do release one I always try my best to see them.

Queen Victoria isn't a queen that I've read a lot about. I read Jean Plaidy's Victoria Victorious I few years ago, but that's about it. So I had some background going into the movie, but not very much. Her life before she was queen is almost unexpected since even though she was a princess, she lived quite an un-princess life.

A lot of the movie focuses on the love story between Queen Victoria and her future husband Prince Albert. It's interesting to not that even though he married the queen, he never actually became king. Its due to the fact that a king has power over the queen, and since it was Victoria's throne, Albert could never be above her. While the movie doesn't address this specific issue, a large part of the movie is the power struggle between the two.

One thing I do tend to find hard to understand in historical films like this is keeping straight all the different political men. But in this film it was overall easy to keep them straight.

I would recommend this movie, but honestly I would probably recommend any historical movie like this. I can tell you the boy wasn't a fan since there wasn't a lot of action, and "nothing happened" according to him. But if you enjoy movies about queens, and if you're somewhat curious about Queen Victoria you'd probably enjoy this as well.

~Shoshanah

4 comments:

  1. Hmm....I'm trying to buy a book for my friend and I think you might be the person to ask. She loved the other boleyn and the queens fool. But she's looking for something different but along the same lines. It's for her b-day. Any suggestions?

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  2. I really want to see this movie but J is still holding grudge from when I made him see Becoming Jane and mislead him to think it would be exciting.

    I may drag my mom to see this one.

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  3. Being home in the US at the moment, I was super surprised to see a commercial for this movie being in the theatres...I saw this in the cinema in London in March! :P

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  4. I can't wait to see the movie, it looks awesome!!!

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