Lord Randolph is a black man. Scotsman George Dalgleish is black. Andrew Ker is black. Bess of Hardwick is Chinese. After this, I don't want to hear another complaint about Mickey Rooney playing Japanese, Johnny Depp as Tonto, or John Wayne as Genghis Khan. This movie screams out that it is not history. The slave trade that brought blacks to Europe had barely begun but this movie proposes that blacks are long integrated into the society and have risen to the nobility. If this was a high school or college play, that's fine. But big budget film? No.
David Rizzio, who served as a secretary for Queen Mary, is openly gay. Also, he has an affair with Henry Darnley - Mary's husband - on their wedding night! Right. Well, it is true that Rizzio was accused of impregnating the queen because of his close association with her and Darnley was estranged from Mary very soon after the marriage but this is an interesting bit of fiction. The brutal murder of Rizzio takes on a new meaning when he is homosexual.
Mary Stuart was raised in France. She was married to the King of France, Francis II. He died young and she returned to Scotland, where she had been queen since she was a week old. She should not have an Irish accent. The movie is more interested in listening to Mary titter and squeal with her ladies in waiting than ponder the decisions and crises that led to her abdication, English imprisonment, and execution. Her menstrual cycle figures in the story because that's unique to Reformation royalty.
The characters are mostly unlikeable and I cared not a whit when Rizzio was murdered or Darnley strangled. Even Mary seals her fate in an exchange (entirely fictional) in which she tells Queen Elizabeth that she is her superior. No, Mary was quite clearly Elizabeth's inferior except that she managed to birth a child. Mary's son became King of England and Scotland upon Elizabeth's death.
This is crap. I was very tempted to walk out. Avoid this turkey.
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