The Other Boleyn Girl (2008/Sony Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B+     Sound: B+     Extras: B     Film: C

 

 

Here’s a question: How can you possibly make a bad film starring Eric Bana, Natalie Portman, and Scarlett Johansson?  Is it even possible?  Well I am afraid to say it is, it’s called The Other Boleyn Girl, which the title itself really isn’t helpful, but don’t worry because tracking this film down should be the last of your worries.  It’s really a shame too because I really like all three of these amazing talents and to have them in the same film seems like an instant winner regardless of the content. 

 

For those of you like myself who had no clue what the title was about or more importantly what the story was about, let me briefly clue you in.  The story involves two sisters (Boleyn Girls) who are of course played by Natalie Portman (Anne) and Scarlett Johansson (Mary) and their parents are trying to advance their families’ position and power by getting the girls into the court of King Henry in an attempt to win his love and thus gaining power and fortune for their family.  However, what starts out as just a simply courtship turns ugly as the sisters begin to battle with one truly in love with the king and the other more ruthless as she is only driven by ambition.  This all becomes more complex as the King already has a Queen in the picture, but then comes an illegitimate child with one of the sisters, but I won’t ruin it for you ahead of time as to which of them it is. 

 

I am sure that most people can see where the films plot heads as this wannabe period piece throws together scenes here and there that are fairly good, but overall inexperienced film director Justin Chadwick just can’t seem to draw together an interesting enough direction with the novel-based material.  A film like this typically has words associated with it as I am sure most saw in the trailer: sensual, desire, intrigue, betrayal, and so on and so forth, but those words don’t make a lick of sense if the film is not formed in such a way that the viewer can really care about them, which is sadly the case here despite very good performances from all involved.  I’d say that this is a second rate Girl With The Pearl Earring, which also starred Johansson and is a superior film. 

 

The Blu-ray is quite good in performance both picture and sound-wise, but is not necessarily anything that will challenge your system.  The 1.85 X 1 1080p anamorphic, digital High Definition transfer looks vibrant and demonstrates some of the best qualities of the HD format, but the cinematography in general is rather uninteresting overall, which is a shame because the costumes and sets could have really been something worth seeing in HD.  The same is relatively true of the films Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, which is solid, but never overly stunning, which really has nothing to do with the film Blu-ray as it does with the films sound design and engineering, which is average at best. 

 

This Blu-ray does offer a great deal of extras to coincide with the film, including deleted and extended scenes, a few featurettes, and Picture-in-Graphics exclusive which include facts and trivia to accompany.  All of this does help to enhance the story and is helpful in giving some overall context to the film, but again the execution of the film is just average.

 

 

-   Nate Goss