The Other Boleyn Girl: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Justin Chadwick, written by Peter Morgan, based on Philippa Gregory’s novel, 115 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Justin Chadwick movie, “The Other Boleyn Girl,” follows sisters Mary and Anne Boleyn in a film that easily could have been called “The Other Woman,” with all that implies.

The film is a full-on Tudor soap opera--and a reasonably entertaining one at that, particularly if you prefer historical trash over historical truth, the latter of which the movie barely attempts to offer. Peter Morgan (“The Queen”) based his script on Philippa Gregory’s 2002 novel, which itself only used fact to bolster its wild run into the velvet walls of potboiler fiction.

Like the book, the movie version tarts up history to a feverish level, amplifying its more salacious elements in an effort to wedge sex, lust and sibling rivalry within the frequent machinations, court upheavals, betrayals and beheadings that followed the rule of the infamous King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) in 16th-century England.

At the start, we see the Boleyn girls, along with their brother George, as young children playing in a meadow. They couldn’t be a happier, tighter group. Butterflies should be this light and buoyant.

Of course, butterflies sometimes get netted and pinned.

Their parents, Lady Elizabeth (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Sir Thomas Boleyn (Mark Rylance), watch the children play while Sir Thomas notes aloud how special Anne is. What he sees in her is opportunity, one that will lift the Boleyns to a new level of status and power. This comes years later when Anne, as a saucy young adult (Natalie Portman), is put forth by her father and uncle (David Morrissey) to offer the king what his wife, Catherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent), hasn’t been able to give him--a male heir.

It all goes disastrously, with Anne failing to work her magic and quickly being sent away to France to learn how to be a woman. And so along comes Mary--sweet, good-natured, very-married Mary (Scarlett Johansson)--who becomes the king’s mistress and bears him a son. Trouble is, when Anne returns, she’s a new woman, one who now is so fetching to the king that he decides he must get her into bed, even if it means kicking befuddled Mary to the curb, beheading bitter Catherine and casting England into religious turmoil in the process.

As cheap as the movie’s aspirations are, it certainly doesn’t look cheap--the costumes and sets are top-notch, as is the talent. While Johansson is stuck with the less-showy role, she does reveal her mettle in key scenes, such as when she marches through a crowd of condemning onlookers to grab Anne’s newborn child, Elizabeth, who one day would prove that the kind didn’t need a male heir.

Bana is fine as Henry, though portraits reveal that the original Henry hardly had Bana’s sort of pin-up potential. And as for Portman, well, she’s so good here at balancing how the quest for power and position corrupted her relationship with her sister and which ultimately led to her own undoing by the sword, that she turns out to be the best reason to see the movie.

Grade: B-