Fun and games with the royal seductress
THE FAVOURITE
(15, 119 mins)
Yorgos Lanthimos
Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz
Director: Stars: BUMBLEBEE
(PG, 114 mins)
Travis Knight
Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Peter Cullen (voice)
Director: Stars:
WHEN I get lost trying to follow the twists and turns of British history, I find it helps if I can attach a famous face to longdead kings and queens. The Lion In Winter gave me Peter O’Toole as Henry II and Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor Of Aquitaine. For George III, I have Nigel Hawthorne in a bed shirt and for George VI, Colin Firth sweating in front of a microphone.
Henry V used to be either Laurence Olivier in a suit of armour or a fresh-faced Kenneth Branagh. Then I saw his picture hanging in the National Portrait Gallery and he became Terry Hall, frontman of 2-Tone pioneers The Specials. If Hall ever makes it on to Who Do You Think You Are?, he may want to start with his 15th-century lookalike.
Now I have a handle on the oft-overlooked monarch who reigned from 1702 to 1707. Thanks to Queen Anne will always be Olivia Colman laughing manically as she races lobsters in her bedroom. Like many scenes in this bizarre film, it probably didn’t happen but it’s the surreal flights-offancy that burned it into my memory.
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for dark, absurdist art house dramas but here turns buttoned-up costume drama on its head by injecting it with physical comedy, filthy one-liners, outrageous costumes and unhinged dance routines.
Colman plays the heirless queen as a batty invalid who suffers from debilitating gout and is frequently being sick. Her court is full of preening aristocrats, and 17 rabbits reside in the royal bedchamber, one for each of her dead children. The real power is held by her secret lover Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), who has learned precisely when to bully and when to seduce the queen into doing what she wants.
Mostly this involves raising taxes for the war in France which will keep her husband Lord Marlborough (Mark Gatiss) abroad and glorify the family crest. But she takes her eye off the ball when reunited with her cousin Abigail Masham (Emma Stone).
Abigail’s family has fallen on hard times
The Favourite,
and she literally falls flat on her face when she arrives looking for a job. Kicked out of her carriage, she has flies buzzing around her muddied face. “Friends of yours?” deadpans Sarah. Weisz gets plenty of chances to show off her brilliant timing as it all descends into bawdy farce. When Sarah gives Abigail a job as a scullery maid, you can’t tell whether it’s sympathy or malice.
But when Abigail spots Sarah attending to one of the Queen’s most intimate needs, she sees a route out of the kitchen. Organising a lobster race is just one of the schemes she uses to wheedle her way into the royal bed.
A battle of wits develops as Abigail tries to loosen Sarah’s grip on power. She also has to navigate the political machinations of the foppish First Earl of Oxford (a hilarious Nicholas Hoult) while using womanly wiles to seduce a rich, handsome dolt (Joe Alwyn) whom we meet as he’s throwing some wildly anachronistic shapes at a royal ball.
But it’s the women who have the killer moves. Stone and Weisz are on fantastic form yet it’s Colman who is most likely to win awards for her turn as dotty Anne. If she is half as funny when she plays our current Queen in The Crown, the series will be a riot.
Has the #MeToo furore changed Hollywood? It’s probably too early to tell but it seems to have had quite an impact on the Transformers. In five deafening and barely coherent instalments of Michael Bay’s toy-flogging series, I was never sure what the camera was leering at more: the flash cars or the hero’s scantily-clad sidekicks.
That changes with a gentle prequel. Not only is Hailee Steinfeld not dressed like a Vegas stripper, she’s also firmly in the driving seat. The yellow-and-black robot title character has also toned down his act. Instead of transforming into a Chevrolet Camaro, his alter ego is a battered Volkswagen Beetle.
It’s a good look. Less is more. But it begins in a familiar way. On the planet Cybertron, evil shapeshifting
Bumblebee,
robots the Decepticons are knocking lumps out of good cousins the Autocons.
Autocon general Optimus Prime (voiced again by Peter Cullen) sounds the retreat and orders his yellow sidekick B-127 to head to Earth and await further instructions. Damage to his memory cells has left B-127 mute and confused. Instinct tells him to hide so when he lands in California he finds a scrapyard and transforms into a VW Beetle.
He’s found by Charlie Watson (Steinfeld), a friendless 18 year old. It’s 1987 which is why she has a Walkman and why the soundtrack seems to be Now That’s What I Call Music Volumes 1-7.
Charlie hides the car in the garage and sees it turn into a klutzy giant. After he tries to communicate with adorable bleeps and buzzes, Charlie names him Bumblebee and they become besties. The alien/robot/car gets a crash course on life via Charlie’s video collection (he loves The Breakfast Club) and learns English by scanning his car radio to select lyrics from 80s pop songs.
Realising he will suffer nefarious experiments if John Cena’s macho agent tracks him down, Charlie teaches her friend to belt up whenever a stranger approaches.
IF THIS had been released in 1987, I would have probably lumped it with ET rip-offs like Short Circuit, where Ally Sheedy befriended another robot obsessed with pop culture. I might have even mentioned ITV’s teatime sitcom Metal Mickey. But what would have seemed crushingly derivative then now feels like a reminder of a more innocent age.
Director Travis Knight’s last film was Kubo And The Two Strings, a lovely stopmotion animation about a Japanese child befriending a talking monkey. Those nights trying to imbue lumps of Plasticine with personalities have served him well. For the first time in the series we have a CGI robot with an inner life. Charlie is another misfit cast adrift in an adult world.
What looked like another hormone-fuelled action movie is actually a tender, characterbased drama.