Rent Catherine the Great (2019)

Not what I expected - Catherine the Great review by Ken

I thought: period drama, Helen Mirren - should be good.

Sadly, as is so often the case these days, it seems to be considered necessary to pepper the dialogue with a proliferation of foul language. A real shame because it looked like it would be otherwise very watchable. So, if you don't like to hear the "F" word at regular intervals, avoid this one.

Catherine the not so great - Catherine the Great review by RD

Let's start with the good parts, and many aspects of this film are so good they are indeed worthy of Oscar nominations. The cinematography is superb, with atmospheric outdoor scenes, and sumptuous indoor settings of such incredible grandeur, lit and photographed perfectly and with stunning costumes to add to the splendour of the Russian court of Catherine the Great. Effects are gory and lifelike but never overdone, and the sound is rich, clear and well mixed. Music is beautiful and mixed well in surround.

The storyline concentrates on the on-off romance between Catherine and Potemkin, maybe a little too much as there isn't much else to the film. The characters flip between silly spats and gooey sentiment with a lot of exotic bonking inbetween. The dialogue is exceptionally naff, and sounds like two 20th century schoolkids battling with their first love affair behind the bikesheds.

The dialogue is certainly the worst part of the film, for example when Catherine berates her useless son Paul, she looks at him and in homage to Dad's Army says with a straight face "You stupid boy". Guffaws emanated from our sofa at this. Then when Potemkin boards the royal barge and runs up the steps shouting "let's get this show on the road" you know the script is seriously quality-challenged.

Catherine is at this time the ruler of all Russia, possibly the most powerful ruler in the world, but Dame Helen is showing all the gravitas of an irate pub landlady at closing time. Lots of effing and other oaths which do sound odd and seem out of place which spoil the film even further. Surprisingly this is not one of her great roles, as she is obviously struggling to show her enormous acting capabilities with such a poor script. Potemkin shows a thin portrayal of a rising then fading military star in fits and starts as each part of the script allows, but never really develops any depth of character.

It all goes to show how so much of a film can be great but if the script and dialogue is badly mis-matched then the whole thing flops. And this film does flop.

We struggled through episodes one and two hoping for some improvements, then episode three filled out the storyline a little more, but I'm afraid we nodded off a few times in episode four and greeted the closing titles with a feeling of relief.

Disappointing - Catherine the Great review by DO

Not up to BBC drama standards. Characters and dialogue did not engage me. The frequent sex scenes seemed superfluous- just thete to keep the watchers- they had the oposite effect on me. Disappointing.

Disappointing - Catherine the Great review by OH

I would have done better to read a proper history of Catherine the Great. This was dull and I didn't finish it.

Catherine the Great - Catherine the Great review by CP Customer

Well worth watching,

Concentrated on internal politics of the court which was sumptuously portrayed. Would have thought what was going on outside would have been interesting too given the time in history. Probably too much to cover!