The Young Victoria

Movie: The Young Victoria

Like/Don't Like: Um...sure, I liked it.

I'm a bit on the fence on this one. I liked it. And I liked it better the second time around. But I didn't like that I had to watch it a second time to catch everything. It had a great potential for being a spectacular story but it was lacking. There were gaping holes in the narrative that made it hard to follow at times. And everyone was dressed alike and had the same hair styles and there were times when certain characters were referred to and I wouldn't have a single idea of who they were talking about. Somethings became clearer when I watched the deleted scenes - which, um, shouldn't those scenes have been kept in?

Maybe that was it's problem. It didn't have a clear focus so it got out of control and then hacked up in the editing process.

But for all its flaws I still enjoyed it. Maybe I saw the potential. It chronicles Queen Victoria's years just before her coronation at 18 through the first years of her marriage to Albert and it shows the difficulty she faced as a young queen with all the different people pulling at her for favors and power. All of that was pretty interesting. Emily Blunt was great and Rupert Friend was better than I anticipated. I didn't like him much in Pride and Prejudice but I thought he was good here. The mustache may have won me over.