'Elizabeth' a tale beyond the pale

God save the Queen ... from director Shekhar Kapur.

"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" is a florid melodrama overflowing with suds. It's the Vogue fashion layout school of history: all surface glamour with no meat on its bones.

Riddled with chronological mistakes, a ludicrous reordering of events and characterization that might best be called sophomoric, Kapur's follow-up to his 1998 "Elizabeth" doesn't even have that historically challenged film's insight into the character of one of England's greatest monarchs.

There's no law in filmmaking that says one must reflect actual history with rigor. As long as there have been movies, there have been liberties taken in aid of dramatic effect and narrative flow. And history always is in a constant state of revision. But must they dispense with fact altogether? Kapur and screenwriters Michael Hirst and William Nicholson (shame, shame, m'lord) have taken this tale beyond the pale, leaving Cate Blanchett, one of the finest actresses of this or any other generation, with little choice but to go emotionally over the top.

Meanwhile, such fine co-stars as Geoffrey Rush (as principal secretary and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham), Samantha Morton (as the calculating Mary Stuart) and Susan Lynch (as Mary's lady-in-waiting) are utterly wasted.

Of the supporting players, only Abbie Cornish as Liz's confidante Bess Throckmorton and Clive Owen, dark and dashing as a rather fanciful Sir Walter Raleigh, come off well.

As the "romantic" interest opposite Blanchett's pale and palpitating Highness, Owen's intensity makes some of the bathos almost palatable. There is one electric interlude between them, as Raleigh, a poet as well as an adventurer, gives the Queen a vicarious thrill by relating life on the high seas and his dreams for the New World. A magnificent moment — and then it's gone.

If only the rest of the film had this pulse of life.

The whole film turns on the plot by Spanish King Philip II (played by Jordi Molla with nutty elan) to overthrow the "bastard Queen," install the imprisoned Mary on the throne and reverse the Protestant Reformation.

But the papist schemers are depicted with such cartoonish simplicity (lots of Snidely Whiplash mustache-twirling) that you can't take a moment of it seriously.

The less said about the movie's climactic CHI-generated sequence of the attack of the Spanish Armada the better. Not a scrap of authenticity to it.

Mainly, "The Golden Age" is a showcase for the costumes of Alexandra Byrne, opulent sets, A.R. Rahman's absurdly overwrought music and Remi Adefarasin's photography, which careens from brilliant to excessively showy.

It is revealing that in the 10 years since helming the first "Elizabeth," Kapur has made just one other film, a dreary costume drama called "The Four Feathers" (2002). Would someone please rescue Great Cate — and Elizabeth — from his clutches?

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.