The Other Boleyn Girl Reviews
Critic & User Reviews
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Critic Reviews
A classy romantic cocktail distinguished by its tart yet breezy bite.
Read the full reviewThe result is an entertainingly sudsy trip through early 16th century English history.
Read the full reviewAn enjoyable movie with an entertaining angle on a hard-to-resist period of history.
Read the full reviewA sexy, good-looking political bodice-ripper with an almost flawless cast at the top of its game.
Read the full reviewThe film looks terrific, all Vermeer-style light/dark interplay and sleek design. And Portman is fantastic as the tempestuous Anne.
Read the full reviewIn Portman's dynamic performance you can see strength and vulnerability warring for Anne's soul. In this bedroom view of history, it's that image that sticks.
Read the full reviewFor a movie whose story hinges almost entirely on sex, The Other Boleyn Girl is disappointingly demure.
Read the full reviewShot in high definition and filmed at many historic locations, the film somehow still lacks the splendor of an epic, and its urgency to get on with the next plot point leaves much unexplained while context goes out the window.
Read the full reviewNot content to be a mildly diverting royal bodice-ripper, it spirals out of control into the kind of overwrought dramaturgy that's out of its league.
Read the full reviewCan't quite figure out what it wants to be.|At times it strains to be a stately period drama about 16th-century political intrigue. Then it devolves into soap opera muck and emerges as a rather tame bodice ripper.
Read the full reviewAfter covering much of its ground at a stylish canter, The Other Boleyn Girl finishes at a plod.
Read the full reviewForced to compete for kingly favors, the women were soon rivals, a contest that, in its few meagerly entertaining moments, recalls the sisterly love in ?What Ever Happened to Baby Jane??
Read the full reviewEven by its own standards, the movie becomes increasingly macabre and ludicrous as Anne's machinations get the better of her, and everyone, including the audience, is left feeling shattered, shaken and vaguely unclean for having participated in all this.
Read the full reviewNot good enough to take seriously and, sadly, not bad enough to be any fun.
Read the full reviewReview excerpts provided by Metacritic.com.
The Metascore® designation for this movie is 50
User Reviews
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Its pretty good
"I thought this movie was pretty good but I have to agree with some of the other reviews that scarlett and natalie should have played each others roles. I thought they both did a good job though. I bought the book after I saw the movie because so many reviews said the book was better."
EXCELLENT!!
"This is a very historically correct film. The costumes are fantastic and the acting is wonderful. Natalie Portman is awesome and Scarlett does an excellent job as the "other Bolyn" girl. Scenery is divine - tragic story but wonderful ending!"
VERY GOOD MOVIE!!
"I finally saw this film last night, and can say with ALL honesty, that it was a very good movie!!Natalie and Scarlett both did AMAZING jobs in their roles!!Was it the best movie I have seen this year? No. But it was defintely not as bad as some others here have mentioned. If you like history, it will hold your interest!!I think that it will be a major rental success once released on DVD!!I would give it a 7.5/10 rating."
GREAT! I LOVED IT!
"I LOVED THIS MOVIE SO MUCH. TAKE MY WORD FOR IT AND GO SEE IT. I AM DEFINETLEY GOING TO BUY IT ON DVD. IT HAS BECOME ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES. I LOVE SCARLET. SHE'S A REAL GOOD ACTRESS!"
Get it from Blockbuster
"My friends and I did enjoy the movie, even though it was a bit like a sixteenth-century soap-opera. My best friend did point out many differences between the book and the movie, but obviously there will always be differences and the books will always be better. The acting was nice; I think everyone fit their character well. The screenplay kind of sucked, though, which kind of killed the movie. Still, it wasn't horrible; I liked it. You get to watch Jim Sturgess and Eric Bana for two hours :D I would suggest renting it from Blockbuster when it is released rather than going to the theaters."
Great book, good movie
"I read the book and really enjoyed it...it is an interesting historical fiction and a good read. I just saw the movie today and though like most movies based on books it was not 100% the same as the book, I still really liked it. I am not surprised they cut out some of the details since the story included many different romances for both girls that would never have fit in a 2 hour movie but I do think there was enough detail to build the characters and the story. If you like historical fiction I recommend both the movie and the book but if you are going to be judging for accuracy you will most likely be disappointed since it is definitely fictional."
"Off with their heads!"
"Historically inaccurate, and cinematically inadequate, the film spends too much time with the panoply of Tudor England which does not further the character development, or establish the tension between the characters. Eric Bana was not the debauched Henry, old and smelly. Natalie Portman was the perfect choice to play Anne and Scarlet Johannson was the perfect choice to play Mary, but the director could not transcend the extremely bad screenplay to showcase their talents. The book is great and I wonder that Philippa Gregory would allow such a travesty to be visited upon her book. Ms. Gregory is a superlative wordsmith, an excellent story teller."
Disappointing
"i expected to see a good movie after i heard how good the book was, the movie was very disappointing and just plain bad. the dialogue sucked, the story line wasnt developed well, i felt the movie tried too hard because there was too much happening at the same time and things quickly changed and kept getting worse. but i guess watching eric bana for 2 hours was worth it ;-) other than that the movie really sucked"
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction...
"A quick glimpse at the Tudor family line on Wikipedia will yield hundreds of years of made-for-movie material, but none quite as compelling as the story of Anne Boleyn. Pair a classic story with airy language, beautiful sets and costumes, and some A-list names and you have Oscar magic in the making. Right? Well, not always. We've seen it before and we're not necessarily impressed with royalty anymore. The Other Boleyn Girl offers new perspectives and dramatic angles on the saga of wives that is Henry VIII's legacy, but nearly drowns in melodrama.The Other Boleyn Girl could be so much more. As a hyper-dramatic costume flick, it does stand out. There's more than meets your eye, and the costarring performances are not to be missed. There's a lot of material to cover in this story, but a simplified script would have helped keep this film farther away from too much drama. Especially with a true story as wild as this, there's not a lot that needs to be changed or added to grip the viewer. Any embellishments verge on destroying believability and creating situations we can't relate to."
waste of time
"this movie sets a very good example of what not to do if you are married. i hated the movie, it was slow it was an entire film about cheating and wrong doing by men, women, fathers and extended family there was nothing good about this movie."
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