The Favourite

Name: The Favourite
Genre: Biography, Drama, History, Comedy
Released: November 23, 2018
Duration: 119 min
Rating: 91
Cast: Basil Eidenbenz, Denise Mack, Emma Delves, Emma Stone, Faye Daveney

2018

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 53 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 521 Ratings

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7.7

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7.7	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 521 Ratings

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The Favourite

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Movie Details & Credits

Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: November 23, 2018 | R

Starring: Basil Eidenbenz, Denise Mack, Emma Delves, Emma Stone, Faye Daveney, Isaura Barbé-Brown, Jack Veal, James Smith, Jennifer White, Jenny Rainsford, Joe Alwyn, John Locke, LillyRose Stevens, Mark Gatiss, Nicholas Hoult, Olivia Colman, Paul Swaine, Rachel Weisz, Timothy Innes, Wilson Radjou-Pujalte

Movie Facts:

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2018 Venice International Film Festival. View more awards and nominations

Summary: Early 18th century. England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving. A frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When a new servant Abigail (EmmaEarly 18th century. England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving. A frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When a new servant Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah. Sarah takes Abigail under her wing and Abigail sees a chance at a return to her aristocratic roots. As the politics of war become quite time consuming for Sarah, Abigail steps into the breach to fill in as the Queen’s companion. Their burgeoning friendship gives her a chance to fulfill her ambitions and she will not let woman, man, politics or rabbit stand in her way. [Fox Searchlight]… Expand

Director: Giorgos Lanthimos

Genre(s): Biography, Drama, History, Comedy

Rating: R

Runtime: 119 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Theo Schear

Oct 17, 2018

This is a work of art that embraces and embellishes all the joys of cinema while offering a more enjoyable and progressive revisionist history. Read full review

100

Mick LaSalle

Nov 28, 2018

It’s a bit crazy, wild yet precise, a mix of comedy and drama that feints in the direction of anachronism, even as it provides a grand showcase for Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Olivia Colman, who are extraordinary. Read full review

100

Neil Smith

Jan 1, 2019

A spiky, pithy, and unconventional delight. Read full review

Richard Lawson

Sep 4, 2018

The Favourite is a pleasure to watch. It’s weird without being alienating, dirty without being cheap. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a better acting trio this fall. What fun The Favourite is, while still striking a few resonantly melancholy chords here and there. Read full review

Ann Hornaday

Nov 30, 2018

A deliciously diabolical comedy of ill manners and outré palace intrigue. Read full review

Empire Ian Freer

Jan 1, 2019

Weird, dirty but accessible, The Favourite is a perfectly performed, thrillingly made period picture that morphs before your very eyes. Come for the top-drawer hi-jinx; stay for a moving look at human foibles and frailties. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Dec 1, 2018

The actresses are so expert, especially Colman, with her grievous, hardbitten woe, that you may not care, but if one is to mock this sort of historical extravaganza, I much prefer the nutbrain Monty Python approach to all this deep-dish folderol. Read full review

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User Reviews

LamontRaymond

Nov 23, 2018

Easily one of the best films of 2018. The three leads are incredibly good, with Rachel Weisz leading the way. I've always loved Olivia Colman, and she's fantastic as the insecure, gluttonous Queen Anne. Emma Stone is really good, but the movie takes a bit of a turn (along with herEasily one of the best films of 2018. The three leads are incredibly good, with Rachel Weisz leading the way. I've always loved Olivia Colman, and she's fantastic as the insecure, gluttonous Queen Anne. Emma Stone is really good, but the movie takes a bit of a turn (along with her performance) about 2/3 of the way through. I have to mention the director and the DP - the film is shot absolutely beautifully, and the score is innovative / perfectly pitched. A word of caution: if you're easily offended, you might want to steer clear. It's not a movie of its time. But it is uproariously funny at times - great writing.… Expand

21 of 38 users found this helpful2117

hnestlyonthesly

Oct 12, 2019

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. There’s a beautiful kind of symmetry in finishing the year off with another Rachel Weisz film after having begun this foolhardy endeavor to review every film I’ve seen in theaters back sometime in May. I’ve come around to The Favourite by a roundabout sort of way through a discovery that my Wife’s favorite film as a teenager was a Australian indie called The Rage in Placid Lake, a dry comedy about a young man on the edge of young adulthood who rebels against his well-meaning, liberal, progressive parents by playing the System and becoming the Man. It actually feels like a film that has grown more relevant over time, reminds me that even twenty years ago, we had the answers all along, but without sufficient awareness of those woke platitudes, no social-emotional growth can occur. (I wrote a little bit about this phenomena of well-meaning parents and unhelpful wokeness in my review of Ralph Breaks the Internet of all places.)
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Anyway, after acquainting myself with that acidic wit, I had high expectations for The Favourite, and they were surpassed today.

The Favourite presents itself as a modest comedy of manners: the stakes are modest, domestic, and yet the story is set with the backdrop of a looming battle in faraway France that threatens to maybe or maybe not end life as we know it for Queen Anne and her country. The nebulousness of violence Over There coupled with its immediacy as a matter of state sets the film apart from other dramas that are primarily focused on the minutiae of courtly intrigue and hurt feelings of the landed aristocracy. Not every story set in England has to be about geopolitics, but we ought not romanticize the wealth and privilege of lives lived without a recognition of the tremendous amount of violence and bloodshed that makes those lives possible, in the same way that we rightly balk at the Plantation sheik aesthetic. The Favourite’s found a way to bridge the gap and excellently captures the peculiarly American cultural disconnect with its wars abroad.

The Favourite‘s formalist plot structure, organized into six chapters, anticipates lines and builds tension in a way that feels appropriately pretentious and self-aware. One of the challenges of historical fiction is whether the film can justify its relevance. This was the issue with Phantom Thread for me (a film I dearly love). It’s that feeling you get when you watch a Shakespeare play set in steampunk and you don’t know why. Historicity for the sake of historicity is not interesting. Slavish attention to historical accuracy is not a virtue, as movies like A Knight’s Tale and Robin Hood: Men in Tights will attest (also, films that are sort of out of time like It Follows and less notably, The Love Witch, which is actually a terrible example and shouldn’t really be considered beyond this point). The Favourite bends the rules when it needs to: the dance scenes that resist cliches, the shooting range, the way in which Abigail and Sarah break gender norms without the script being preachy about it (as Wife put it) in subversive one-liners (“I am a woman, how could I acquire a horse?”).

The trailers gags don’t give away punchlines, they set them up, much like Eighth Grade. For someone who was looking at this film in terms of the development of the screenwriter’s politics and craft (in the same way that Amy Sherman Palladino’s Marvelous Ms Maisel builds on Gilmore Girls or The Last Dragon Prince builds on Avatar: TLA), the most interesting scenes are those of sex and courtship, which give an expansive and nuanced depiction of different forms of erotic relationships and add to our understanding of characters.

The Favourite is worth a look: lovely performances, dark humor, and an ending that resists the easy outs of storytelling.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

eva3si0n

Dec 5, 2020

The Favourite is a great movie. For a long time I did not catch such a high from modern cinema. It seems to be so simple, but so brilliantly served. For some time, the director shows that when the main character suffers, this does not make him a protagonist, thereby lobbing establishedThe Favourite is a great movie. For a long time I did not catch such a high from modern cinema. It seems to be so simple, but so brilliantly served. For some time, the director shows that when the main character suffers, this does not make him a protagonist, thereby lobbing established norms. Olivia Colman in this film showed his beautiful acting, one of the strongest actresses in the UK. Thank you Yorgos Lanthimos for a great movie.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Markini

Feb 22, 2019

The dark dramedy does a great job at revealing a relatively unknown time in British History. All three actresses do a great job in both making you relate to them and revile them. The script and direction are all decent. The costume design is one of the best parts of the film. However, theThe dark dramedy does a great job at revealing a relatively unknown time in British History. All three actresses do a great job in both making you relate to them and revile them. The script and direction are all decent. The costume design is one of the best parts of the film. However, the ending really gives this good film and adequate sendoff.… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

Popcorn55

Jan 28, 2019

Lost in a limbo somewhere between Masterpiece Theater and Monty Python, this artsy-fartsy cutesy-pootsy "period drama" is neither convincingly "period", nor very dramatic, nor does the occasional half-hearted comic scene redeem it. A lot of work obviously went into this, and we have toLost in a limbo somewhere between Masterpiece Theater and Monty Python, this artsy-fartsy cutesy-pootsy "period drama" is neither convincingly "period", nor very dramatic, nor does the occasional half-hearted comic scene redeem it. A lot of work obviously went into this, and we have to respect the efforts of all involved but... it all turns out to be an odd and rather dreary affair that's more depressing than entertaining.

While there are many lingering close-ups of Emma Stone to show that her agent has negotiated a generous portion of exclusive screen time for her, the cinematography in general is notably annoying and distracting. In particular the "fisheye" wide angle shots with peripheral curving and distortion of the images, help to destroy any immersive experience here, and distance us from the story. A story which is often a bit hard to follow, and hard to swallow. That most of the cast don't make any attempt at English accents, and talk essentially L.A. street talk, additionally sabotages the historical ambience we expect. Maybe this was supposed to be campy, like it was in "Marie Antoinette", but it doesn't come across that way here.

Finally, the irritating score compounds the strange off-key quality of the film. While some period music is used, it's performed and mixed in a way that sounds inauthentic. Then we have long, long periods where the score is some kind of inexplicable, monotonous, modernistic knocking, tocking noise that again distracts us from the action at hand and reminds us that this is an artsy-fartsy director getting in his artsy farts instead of entertaining us.

On the positive side, the bunnies are cute; ducks are always a plus in any film; and when the horsies prance along with their feathered crests on, that's pretty darn cool.… Expand

2 of 4 users found this helpful22

oldcoot

Dec 9, 2018

A waste of excellent performances by Colman, Weisz and Stone. Gratuitous, irrelevant scenes fail to add period flavor and detract from the already thin story line. What a disappointment.

7 of 20 users found this helpful713

FOURCAKERS

Jun 1, 2019

This is by far one of the worst movies I have ever seen!! I wanted to throw up during the lesbian scenes..it was the biggest waste of time and I will never get those 2 hours back!! How people gave it 7's and 8', 9's and 10's is BEYOND ME!

2 of 4 users found this helpful22

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10	#10 Best Movie of 2018
34	#34 Most Discussed Movie of 2018