The Other, Other, OTHER, Boleyn Girls…..
Last night I went to see a movie with a friend. I actually had not been to see anything in a theater since my daughter was born, so it’s been more than 2 years! We went to see The Other Boleyn Girl. I just finished the book, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. My friend and I were very excited to see the film based on what we both thought was a delicious book! The reviews of the movie, overall have been disappointing, but it’s such a great story line that even if the movie was a train-wreck in comparison to the book, we figured it would be good.
We paid (gasp!) $10.00 each for our tickets. We found the theater. We sat in the back row. It seems that when designing the theater, someone miscalculated something because the stadium seating ended one row before the very back. Our row was lower than the one in front of us. Reverse stadium seating, perhaps? The place was packed, so we settled in and soon I forgot all about the fuzzy-haired man whose head dominated the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
I’m not giving a play by play of the movie. I don’t get paid to do that sort of thing. Read the reviews written by paid critics. I would say they are mostly accurate. Here’s what I will say. First, if you’re a friend of Phillippa Gregory’s… and you haven’t seen her around for a bit, don’t panic. She’s simply hiding. I would wager that she exiled herself as soon as she realized that her amazing novel had been so crudely disregarded in ever way by the producers of this movie. I honestly don’t know who this movie was about… certainly not the Boleyn’s I’ve read about. We came to the conclusion that this story must be about some OTHER Boleyn girls, another Kind Henry, in the land of “Eng-ga-land”.
The costumes were good. The story line was ridiculous, which is a shame because the Boleyns had a juicy life. Now that I think about it, I don’t see how anyone could do a story around them and it NOT be good. I suppose it took a lot of restraint on the part of the movie writers.
So the movie is over, and suddenly we see shots of the main characters, and in subtitles we read about “what happened after” the movie ends. Oddly enough, we are given factual information about each person’s life following the execution of Anne Boleyn. Factual. So I have to wonder… why would a writer choose to give us accurate historical facts at the end of a movie which was completely inaccurate from start to finish?
Why give us facts when you failed to give us anything factual for the past 2 hours? Why start now, Mr. Movie Person?
There is really no good way to wrap this up. I’m out of steam. I think I lost my mojo while watching the scene where King Henry rapes Anne Boleyn just prior to their wedding night.
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