All things Romance- Novel Reviews, Thoughts etc.

After months of waiting I finally got to see the Young Victoria. I have been waiting on this film since I first heard it was being made. I’ve always had a fascination with Queen Victoria. Apparently she has a reputation to most people as being a dumpy old lady with no sense of humour. That’s not how I saw her at all, she totally appealed to my romantic nature, in fact I think she may be partially responsible for my romantic nature. In school one of the first things they told us about Queen Victoria was that after her husband died she wore black for the rest of her life and had his clothes laid out every day. Could you possibly get more bottersweet romance than that? I think a mixture of that and copiuous amounts of Jane Austen have led me to where I am today. So obviously when I heard they were making a film about how Victoria and Albert met and fel in love and the first year of their marriage I couldn’t help but be utterly excited.
The film didn’t disappoint, it was magical and really the only fault I can find is that it was too short I wanted more, I was desperate for more glimpses of their lives together, them as parents, them as joint rulers! Emily Blunt was totally convincing as Victoria and by the end if you had shown me a photograph of the real Victoria I would have told you you were wrong and Victoria looked exactly like Emily Blunt. Rupert Friend was great too, I’ve been expecting to see him really take Hollywood by storm since he played Wickham in the film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, he really was the only redeeming feature in an otherwise dreadful film. His accent in this was perfect, he looked the part, he charm was subtle but noticeable as were his emotions. One of my favourite bits in the whole film was when they were walking in the garden and he was trying to pretend to like everything she liked as he’d been told but it wasn’t working so he turned around and said “Schubert, I like Schubert, I know you don’t but I do.” For some inexplicable reason that was totally romantic and perfect to me.
Miranda Richardson was perfect in the mother role as well. You really felt her pain at being isolated from her daughter and realising it was her fault for allowing herself to be falsely guided. Other shout outs for great bits of acting have to go to Paul Bettany, Harriet Walter, Mark Maloney and Jim Broadbent. But really the whole cast were wonderful!
The costumes were marvelous and made me wish I was Victorian (whereas previously I’ve always wanted to be Regency, only if I could be the daughter of a duke obviously). I loved the purple dress she wore with the flowers on it when they had a fight and he walked out on her, gorgeous!
This review seems quite short but that really is just because I have nothing bad to pick at! If you want pages and pages of gushing then I will happily oblige but it wouldn’t make for very useful reading, you had much better go and see it for yourself....well go on then what are you waiting for?
(Also I’m well aware this is the second film in a row I’ve gushed about, shocking I’ll right about one I really hated soon I promise!)

Ok so I expressed my not very positive views on the book “He’s just not that into you” but the book has spawned a movie and being the utterly over-opinionated person that I am I have an opinion on the film too! I’ve been told that nobody bothers to tell me what film they are dying to see anymore because chances are I’ve seen it, and chances are that I also found it utterly average. I didn’t realize I was quite so difficult to impress but apparently whenever I talk about a film it’s generally “It was good but....” so my friends were very takenback when they said they wanted to see “He’s just not that into you” and my only response was “See it, I loved it.” Most esspecially odd given that I’d spent the last 5 minutes ranting about the book which still gives me a twinge of annoyance everytime I think that out there are women putting their faith in that book.
Thankfully the film shares almost nothing with the book. It follows several interconnected stories of people struggling through a minefield of different relationship issues. Pretty much everything you can think of is there! He wont marry me, I’m too needy, he’s cheating on me, I’m avoiding commitment, I’m commited I just don’t like marriage, I’m married but I want to sleep with beautiful curvy people, I look for love on myspace. Seriously its all there! Whilst this film is packing some big names (Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johannsson, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston and more) my favourite story is that played out by two actors I’ve never seen before Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long (sidenote: Justin Long not exactly attractive but somewhere in the course of this film I decided I wanted him and I haven’t got over it yet!) Ginnifer plays Gigi, a sweet girl who always seems to like the wrong guys, the guys who just don’t want her although she fails to see that they just don’t want her. And Justin plays Alex who a bar manager who is relationship immune and tries to teach Gigi how to recognize when a guy is not interested in you and when you should just cut and run. They are cute, they have some great funny moments and just the right balance of emotion and amusement unlike some of the other storylines!
If you want a fun, romantic, cuddly film this is a great film to go and see. It’s not going to win any awards but then I never trust that as a judge of a film. After all Slumdog Millionaire just won 8 oscars and I spent most of that waiting for it to finish. If you don’t want any spoilers stop reading her and go and see the film, if you don’t mind spoilers then read on...
I do have some minor issues with this film. I wouldn’t be me if I just said it’s great and I can’t fault it. The whole Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston storyline bugged me. They are two supposedly top quality actors and yet I couldn’t believe that they felt anything for each other. He was supposedly heartbroken after she made him leave due to his refusal to ever get married, all I saw was a man on a boat who was sporting some designer stubble. She didn’t seem to fussed about the end of their relationship either, 7 years? Knowing that he still loves me and I still love him? Meh no biggy. It did touch my cold, unforgiving heart a little bit when she was exhausted and working single handly to look after her father and he showed up did the washing, the shopping and basically provided the love and support that she really needed. But here’s where I lost all respect for this story so she realises that he is better to her than most husband’s ever are to their wives, that he really truly loves her and will be with her for the rest of their lives and so she accepts they will never get married and takes him back. Now if you’d stopped there I would have had so much respect for this storyline, I have nothing against marriage and fully intend to get married one day but I also have absolute respect for principles and this man had principles he just genuinely did not believe in marriage so why oh why when she agrees that they can live happily without a wedding does he feel the need to get down on one knee and propose. Doh!
Drew Barrymore totally goes against everything Greg’s stupid book told us and makes the first move on the guy she likes and they live happily ever after. Good for her!
Maybe possibly the most glaringly obvious fault in calling this an adaption of the book is that almost all the women in it, all the ones who have happy endings anyway, go against all the rules and are the “exception” So after pages and pages of telling us we are not the exception we are the rule this guy puts his name to a film that will leave all women continuing to expect to be the exception? Maybe that’s why I like it so much better than the book because Gigi my absolute favourite character says it all, you may put yourself out there and get hurt, you may do stupid things and get things wrong all the time but at least you still have hope and you are a hell of a lot closer to finding love than the jaded person who things they have the whole thing sussed and just play it like a game.