Lush colors, fabulous setting, court intrigue, and a truly great performance by Cate Blanchette…yet somehow this bored me for the most part. I appreciate Elizabeth’s fantastic rise to be one of England’s greatest queens, if not THE greatest, but the film felt a bit lifeless and not unlike a droll soap opera at times. Well, for the sake of disclosure, Joseph Fiennes is one of my least favorite actors and he sucks the pleasure from every scene he is in(sidenote: while I did not hate Shakespeare in Love, I thought he sucked the air from it…then the mediocre film wins the Academy Award against Saving Private Ryan! WTF…I’m surprised he was not in that other Academy Award winning turd Crash (side sidenote: I did pretty much hate the cheesy Crash right out the door)). I just could not buy that Elizabeth was madly in love with this guy! So maybe it’s all due to Mr. Fiennes’ “work”, but this did not live to up to my expectation.