The Queen

The first thing you need to know is that I got up at 5 to watch Diana's wedding and funeral.

So as a celebrity/royalty/politics/London junkie who agrees that Helen Mirren is a fabulous actress (though I can't call myself a Helen Mirren junkie), of course I liked The Queen.

And yet, I'm not quite sure why the superlative reviews. 98% positive? I've never seen such a thing.

So either I am the child who sees the naked emperor, or I'm an idiot.

I mean, this movie is seriously cheesy. And absurdly predictable. Of course we know what is going to happen, because we were there, and the movie works our knowledge with all its might, showing us those photos of Diana on the yacht with Dodi, photographers outside the Paris hotel, the queen agonizing over whether to go back to London and do the right thing, and, yes, Diana once again dies and the queen once again does the right thing, and our hearts surge along with all of it, because, well, because they did then, and they do again (yes, that's the royal we, in honor of the theme).

But it's worse than that. There's a beautiful stag out there in those Scottish hills, and Prince Philip takes the boys out stalking it (you get it, don't you? please, you have to get it). The queen's car stalls out in a river, and while she's waiting for the ghillies to rescue her, she sees the stag, tells him how beautiful he is, and, when she hears the stalkers, shoos him away. I don't need to tell you what happens to the stag, do I? And do I need to tell you that the queen sheds a tear...for the stag?

Then there's Tony coming to appreciate the queen and the queen coming to appreciate Tony, and at the beginning of the movie he goes to see her and is nervous, and at the end he goes to see her and is confident, etc. and so forth, and so on.

Cheesy, seriously cheesy.

Or, like I said, maybe I'm just an idiot.

Highlights: the actors who play Prince Philip and Alastair Campbell.

Lowlight: remembering how once Tony Blair was a beacon of hope.

Edited to add: Ooh, I just discovered Metacritic (you can heave a collective "duh" now--how could I possibly have been writing a book blog without Metacritic?!). There The Queen gets a 92.