"Fear creates fear," Cate Blanchett's Queen Elizabeth I schools her advisors early on in Shekhar Kapur's sequel to his 1998 just-regular-Elizabeth. Said advisors are freaked out that Spain and the Pope are making noises about a holy war on England, because they assume Britain's millions of Catholics will automatically side with their church. Enemies walk among us! But Elizabeth remains stalwart. "I will not punish my people for their beliefs."
Get it? Huh? Get it? If you do, don't give it too much thought. This handsomely mounted film, in its cute ADD way, soon forgets its half-hearted attempt to make History Relevant to What Is Going On in the World Today and morphs into a sort of Classic Comics on acid, or, as a friend so brilliantly put it, "the longest Eurythmics video ever made." For those keeping score, batting for the Catholics is one Mary Queen of Scots, a cousin of the queen in tense exile, played with a faux-sweet, almost icky haughtiness by Samantha Morton. The other distinguished cast members don't contribute any quite such eccentric performances, which is fine, as the film itself has no reins on its goofiness. Batting for the Queen are several friends and courtiers; the sinister, ruthless advisor Sir Francis Walsingham (Rush), running around getting his hands dirty for her in ways she might not approve of; Elizabeth's Lady-in-Waiting Elizabeth Throckmorton (Cornish), with whom the Virgin Queen can exchange a very high-flown version of girl talk; and the dashing seaman Walter Raleigh, who looks to be the closest Elizabeth will come to a male soul mate. Except Elizabeth's own sense of royal propriety winds up driving Raleigh into the arms of Throckmorton. Steely Elizabeth is both upset and jealous, and things might get pretty dicey for all involved but then — oh no! — the Spanish Navy's coming to kill us all!
At which point Owen's Raleigh starts making like Errol Flynn, and Blanchett's Queen dons a suit of armor and hops on a white steed, the better to do a Joan-of-Arc-by-way-of-Henry-V bit. If there are any history majors left in the audience by the time this scene comes up, the sound you will hear will be all of them screaming "uncle." Some short minutes after that, the rest of the audience will leave the theater with emptier heads than those they walked in with. Quite an accomplishment for a period piece.
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READ MORE: Elizabeth: The Golden Age interviews
