What a way to bring in the New Year than with a terrible movie, as is my usual habit. The Queen is supposed to be a stunning character study of Queen Elizabeth following Princess Diana's sudden death, but it ended up being a bland, plotless, meandering mess. It failed as a character study, since it spent surprisingly little time on the Queen and much more time on Tony Blair, her family, her aide, and their influences on her. I found her character to be rather shallow and uninteresting; she was merely a puppet that was being pushed and pulled by different people without fleshed-out characteristics that make her an individual. Subject-wise, it failed to interest me and did not even take the time to explain the characters and their motivations--its audience is limited to only those most interested in the Princess Diana controversy. The acting on all parts was amateurish and camera-shy, although it may be the fault of the director using poor takes. The editing was absolutely atrocious; it was almost as if they used Windows Movie Maker to do it. The music was so uninsightful and melodramatic that the realism was completely removed. In using archival footage, however, they attempted to mimic the realistic feel of United 93, but that movie succeeded on many more levels to bringing home the impact and the raw realism inherent in the depiction of true events.The ending was surprisingly better than expected. Instead of ending on a simple, sappy note with Elton John singing Candle in the Wind, it added an epilogue scene that both gave its characters much more complexity and made a full turn-around and brought it back to the start (something I am quite fond of). The symbolism of the stag was interesting and worth analyzing. Also, the title shot gave me great expectations for the film (even though they did not live up to them). Wholly unrecommended, unless of course you are extremely entrenched in Diana pathos.
IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0436697/