Haw He Haw He Haw

My history is shaky, I’ll admit that. But even I thought that Elizabeth was a tad modern in its approach to dealing with foreigners (or Johnny Foreigner as the film would have loved to have called them). When I say modern I mean 20 years out of date and the wrong end of a slap from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Take the machiavellian Spanish ambassador (played by James Frain) who in this film was made to look like the tanned and greasy love child of Willem Dafoe and The Crazy Frog. His face couldn’t have said “untrustworthy foreigner” more if it had been Hitler’s. The King (Spanish, not Elvis) didn’t get much of a look in this film (they make it up to him in “Elizabeth 2: The Armada Smasheth!”) but when he is seen or alluded to he is outed as gay (1). And so the whole Spanish nation were reduced down to sneaky bug-eyed weirdos and moustachioed chuff avoiders.

The French didn’t fare much better – Mary of Guise (played by Fanny Ardant, a name so suggestive as to require googling to make sure it wasn’t stolen from a Carry On film) was a Helena Boneham-Carter look-a-like with wild hair and a casual streak that extended as much to random cruelty as it did to sex (2). The Ambassador was played by the football (and fan) kicker himself, Eric Cantona, a man so French that he even makes Gérard Depardieu look like an incomer. Unfortunately he was so wooden as to have been all but useless except for huffing, shrugging and puffing out his chest – all well known Franco traits. But the absolute star of the French camp just has to be Vincent Cassel as the Duc d’Anjou who is played throughout in a camp so high that you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching this in a series of tents atop mighty Everest itself.

He started off prancing about with a pipe after a ‘hilarious’ gag in which he pretended not to be him but to be one of his entourage (3) and rapidly moved to sexual harassment. When I say rapidly I mean within 30 seconds and when I say sexual harassment I mean shouting filthy things to the Queen and grabbing her arse (5) in front of everyone. It was like watching a history lesson as imagined by Paul ‘Rapey’ Danan (6). He spent the rest of the film being a hysteric (and hysterical) sex fiend who would have dressed up as a Nazi and fucked a dead pig three ways to Thursday given half a chance.

All in all the film, whilst looking good and being an enjoyable insight into what made young Elizabeth the Quen we know now, really came over as a “let’s laugh at Johnny Foreigner” fest of mind numbing proportions. The only way it could have got worse was for Richard “God I’m a detestable cunt” Littlejohn and Jim “And I’m not much better” Davidson to have written it. Actually, I bet that would be great fun. I think they should team up to write all of our history for huge blockbuster films – it will be like having an Empire again but without all the hassle of actually having one.

==========

(1) Not entirely unreasonable as his missus was Kathy Burke.

(2) Her undoing – how very British.

(3) Worthy of Ben Elton (3), I think you’ll agree.

(4) I just depressed myself typing his name. Christ.

(5) Or tits, I can’t remember.

(6) This in no way implies he has raped anyone. Just that his actions in Celebrity Love Island made you think he could. Possible on camera. With a smile.