Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Universal Pictures | Release Date: October 12, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
26
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Expect a fast-paced, beautifully mounted and well-acted soap opera with overripe dialogue that plays fast and loose with history - just like they did in the '30s, '40s and '50s - and you won't come away disappointed. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
An enticingly risque saga of the 16th century monarch. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Cate Blanchett returns to the role that made her a star, and though this sequel to "Elizabeth" (1998) is less defensible as history, as florid costume drama it's just as entertaining. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Elizabeth: The Golden Age lacks the intricate plotting that characterized its predecessor. The screenplay is more action-oriented but not as smart, and some of the dialogue is downright cheesy. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Weighed down by its splendor. There are scenes where the costumes are so sumptuous, the sets so vast, the music so insistent, that we lose sight of the humans behind the dazzle of the production. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Blanchett commands the screen as she commands the royal navy. Her unforced majesty makes a so-so film worth watching. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Historians might demand a little more history from Elizabeth: The Golden Age. But soap opera loyalists could hardly ask for more soap. Read full review
60
EmpireWill Lawrence
Over-indulgent and melodramatic, as is the nature of artistic mythmaking, The Golden Age will beguile and repel in equal measure. The performances are supreme, although some viewers may struggle to reconcile the director’s epic intentions. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Too bad Kapur's new, glittering sequel also shows up feeling prematurely old, square, and cautious. A production of exquisitely complicated wigs and expensively grand wide shots, it pauses often to admire its own beauty, leery of messing with previous success. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Favors pageantry over substance. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
It says a lot about this movie that the most arresting character in it is Mary, whom Morton unsurprisingly endows with a fanatical combination of narcissism and rage. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Cate Blanchett can do anything, even play Bob Dylan, but she can't save this creaky sequel to her star-making 1998 biopic of Elizabeth I. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Despite good performances all around, particularly the ever-brilliant Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a gilded ornament, speculative and uninterested in much besides this queen's matters of heart. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Ms. Blanchett can do no wrong, and does none here, though the movie around her, a popcorn-worthy sequel to the 1998 "Elizabeth," often lapses into opacity or grandiosity. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
History gets short shrift from screenwriters William Nicholson and Michael Hirst -- starting with the not insignificant fact that in 1585, Elizabeth was 52 years old – but Kapur is clearly more interested in spectacle and soap opera than dusty old facts. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Squanders the opportunity to give us a telling glimpse of the woman behind the ruff. Instead, the costume drama is all gilt and opulence. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
It is a silly film about serious matters. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
If you go in fully prepared for the cinematic equivalent of a grocery-store novel, this unnecessary sequel to "Elizabeth" (1998) has its pleasures. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
It’s intentionally playful and an inadvertent giggle, an overripe melodrama that’s by turns a bodice-ripper, a cloak-and-dagger thriller and a serious-minded historical drama with dubious contemporary overtones. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
A shrill and silly affair, bordering at times on camp. Read full review
50
PremiereGlenn Kenny
This handsomely mounted film, in its cute ADD way, soon forgets its half-hearted attempt to make History Relevant to What Is Going On in the World Today and morphs into a sort of Classic Comics on acid, or, as a friend so brilliantly put it, "the longest Eurythmics video ever made." Read full review
50
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
It's common in Hollywood to describe a disappointing film this way: "Well, it certainly looks great!" Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
The Golden Age is packed with distractions. But the biggest of all is the story itself, which works so mightily to tarnish the queen at its core. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
Despite its title, Shekhar Kapur's new film resembles tarnished copper, its dull focus more appropriate for an episode of “One Tree Hill” than a biopic of one of Britain's greatest monarchs. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Schickel
It's a faux epic -- swell costumes, historically authentic settings, a certain amount of bustle and skulking, but very little dramatically gripping activity. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Blanchett miraculously gives a good performance, even when saddled with lines like this one, to Clive Owen's Sir Walter Raleigh: "In another world, could you have loved me?" Read full review
42
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The best you can say about Owen is that no actor has looked better in thigh-high boots and puffed-out britches. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
An unholy mixture of the banal and the bombastic. Read full review
40
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Without the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett continue the role that launched her to stardom, there would be little to recommend this latest of many cinematic and television accounts of the celebrated monarch's life. Read full review
40
Village VoiceRobert Wilonsky
Kapur and his screenwriter have little interest here in maintaining even a dollop of historical accuracy. Read full review
40
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Might have been a lavish, silly entertainment. In places it comes close, but no sheaf of tobacco. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
Gives new meaning to "costume drama" in that it is a drama primarily about costumes. But the drama is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the temple. Read full review
40
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
The original “Elizabeth” was visually lush and quite engaging, but this is a sprawling mess. Read full review
33
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
So instead of history and drama, we get images, many of them striking but none of them memorable, and noise that deafens until no sense can escape. The events beg for Shakespearean gravity, but the only tragedy here is that so little could be made of so much. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Overdresses and ultimately abandons what drew us to its 1998 predecessor in the first place: an intimate embrace with history. Read full review
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