The Other Boleyn Girl – Review

WARNING: Spoiler Review! If you haven’t seen this movie and plan on it, you’ve been warned.

I went to see The Other Boleyn Girl the other night. I went into it with the assumption that it was going to be another film that I wouldn’t understand. After being dragged to The Queen, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Atonement in the past, I thought this was going to be another historical chick flick disaster, especially because I usually find medieval or historical British films extremely dry, stuffy, and incredibly boring.

Natalie Portman stars as Anne Boleyn, an attractive young woman, who fights for the affection of King Henry VIII (played by Eric Bana) with her sister, Mary Boleyn (played by Scarlett Johansson). Anne and Mary are invited to come live at the Royal Court, and King Henry’s wife feels rightfully threatened by them because she has had no luck in producing a male heir to the throne and thinks he may try with one of them.

Through a series of events and plot twists throughout the movie, he ends up getting both of them pregnant. Mary has a boy, but because he’s still married to the queen, the child is illegitimate. He then fathers a child, a daughter, with Anne. King Henry is obviously mad they had a daughter and not a son, but we later learn that she grows up to be Queen Elizabeth I.

There are a number of accusations towards the end of the film, and Anne and her brother end up being beheaded. This was a fascinating movie, and although there were some historical inaccuracies, it was great. I was very pleasantly surprised.

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