Rent The Favourite (2018)

Paper thin superficial plot but very modern - The Favourite review by RD

Can't understand why this won so many awards.

The cinematography is poor, with soft focus and an over-use of extreme wide angle lenses than make everything curved and distorted. The shooting in low light gave the interior shots a natural balance, but unfortunately the daylight through windows produced so much flare they obliterated anything nearby in the shot.

The sound is good although there's not much use of the surround channels, and the music is painfully odd often with the same note squeaked out every few seconds, repetitively ad nauseam. It didn't add to any on-screen action.

The settings were fabulous, Hampton Court and Hatfield House looked magnificent, and the interior furnishings likewise. The acting also was good all round.

The real weak point was the screenplay. Very 21st century and streetwise, complete with break dancing (20th century) and some daft scenes that just appear to pad out the film and give some blood cells to the anaemic story.

The story? Whacky queen has ambitious and bossy aide, another aide appears and wins queens favour. Jealousy consumes aide number one. Film ends.

And - the film ends without any apparent resolution or development, it just looked like they ran out of money at that point, so they decided to suddenly knock it all on the head and get on with the post-production.

Prizes should be awarded to anyone who can read the credits. They have been designed by an intern in his school holidays, all geometric with capital letters everywhere so the spacing is extreme, resembling the alphabet available in the search function for the BBC iPlayer. Completely unreadable without going cross-eyed. Can you can make up other words diagonally if you pause the titles?

Maybe we have been spoilt - we watched Barry Lyndon a few weeks ago and perhaps it's raised our standards too high.

Overhyped but watchable - The Favourite review by Alphaville

This is a skewed take on Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and her court in the early eighteenth century, complete with “scenes of a sexual nature”, as they say on TV. She’s frail and irascible, while her favourite Rachel Weisz runs affairs… until maid Emma Stone comes along. It’s as well made as any English heritage drama, with an added quirkiness that makes it constantly watchable. The dancing, for instance, is more Pulp Fiction than Jane Austen. Colman won an Oscar for her showy role, but if it’s an acting piece you’re after, there are more arresting performances here, especially Nicholas Hoult as the foppish leader of the opposition.

Film lovers will relish the “making of” short on the DVD Xtras. Director Yorgos Lanthimos explains how he uses wide angle and deep focus to give the picture a painterly look, and how he distorts the frame by using a convex lens. And yet… it all adds up to an historical drama that never gives us anyone to root for, never engages the emotions and fails to linger in the memory as anything other than a curiosity.

Brilliant acting. - The Favourite review by NC

The three ladies are very solid right through the film. The set shots/rooms are first rate. The historic skeleton is pretty accurate, according to the experts.....with some innuendo woven in as storyline of course.

Should be a 5, at least a 4, but the odd swing into objectionable-behaviour-for-the-hell-of-it, and the vaguely comic undertow.....plus the super good teeth....makes a solid 3.5

Brilliant and Beautiful - The Favourite review by Champ

This film garnered excellent reviews on its original release, and I can really see why. Firstly, it looks absolutely beautiful - every frame looks like an Old Master. The period music and general soundscape also contributes to the brilliant period effect. In some way, the combination of visuals and soundscape reminded me of Peter Greenaway's The Draughtman's Contract. But unlike that film, this has a distinct narrative arc, that in places almost felt like a thriller - I was gripped as the story unfolded.

The three main characters are all brilliantly portrayed, and I felt my sympathies wax and wane between them as the story progressed. The dialogue is sharp and funny too, and the actors all relish it.

I'm very surprised by the number of negative reviews on here, as I would have expected people to understand what they'd be getting with a Yorgos Lanthimos film before they ordered it. Anyway, suffice to say it met and exceeded my expectations, and I'm very happy to recommend it.

Too arty - The Favourite review by DH

Acting - superb

Cinematography - looking through a goldfish bowl didn't work for me

Music - mind numbingly appalling

Through some of the scenes there is a 2 tone noise that does nothing to add to atmosphere, it just makes you want to scream. Not sure what the director wanted to achieve by this but if it was to have people shouting 'make it stop' then he achieved his aim.

Coleman, Weisz and Stone put in stellar performances but let down by a director who wanted to turn this art-house.

TYPICAL OSCAR FODDER

What was it FOR? - The Favourite review by Mehitabel

Visually lavish, indeed lush. Dutch genre painting meets expensive panto.

But what were we supposed to take away? Ageing and unwell queen bestows capricious favour first on one woman, then on a different one and then back and forth a bit. And.....? Well, and nothing. There's no plot to speak of. You're not waiting for any resolution because you know from the start there won't be one. It's rather as if a Mediaeval monk had spent hours illuminating the border of a page, then forgotten to include the text.

And while I'm a huge Olivia Colman fan, and while her speciality of "mumsy hang-dog" works a treat in some scenes, never have I watched anyone so badly mis-costumed; she should have been wearing a t-shirt reading "Gimme an Oscar!" Though in fairness, it can't be easy to act the symptoms of a stroke. By the end, though, I found "Mrs Morley"'s petulance and flip-flop moods (which change within seconds) simply tiresome and irritating. I was rather wishing she would die. Which is the fault of whichever frightfully-clever person(s) wrote and directed.

If you want to see some lavish historical settings and costumes, and three women vying for the title Most Powerful Actorrr, give this a spin. If you want story, enlightenment or food for thought, go elsewhere.

Bizarre, but worth viewing - The Favourite review by PC

After seeing the film previews, I was expecting a comedic drama. In reality it is anything but. It portrays a very dystopian, other-worldly view of early 18th century court life, centred around Queen Ann, Sarah the 1st Duchess of Malborough and Abigail Hill, the latter's cousin. If this film did nothing, it did make me reach for the history books. Whether, in reality, court life was this warped and whether there was a lesbian relationship between Queen Ann and the other two women is unclear from what I have read. What is fact is that Sarah lived to the grand old age of 82 and become one of the most powerful and wealthy women during the reign of George I (Queen Ann's succcessor). No mention of Queen Ann's husband, Princde George of Denmark, who died in 1708, so I assume the film was set after this time. As for the fim itself, the acting is superb and I can understand why the film got the gongs it did. However, the dialogue was delivered in such a quick and matter-of-fact way, I found it did help to have the sub-titles turned ON! The frequent use of wide-angle photography and the one-bar jarriing "music" added to the sense of surrealism. Would I watch it again? - yes, if only to catch some of the dialogue I missed!