A Royal Night Out

Atlas Distribution Company

Reviewed by: Tami Smith, Guest Reviewer for Shockya

Grade: B

Director: Julian Jarrold

Screenwriter: Trevor de Silva and Kevin Hood

Cast: Sarah Gadon, Bel Powley, Emily Watson, Rupert Evert

Release Date: December 4th, 2015

The future Queen Elizabeth II and her Sister Princess Margaret went “out” on May 8th, 1945 to celebrate V.E. Day. Their royal party of sixteen included a nanny, several friends, Captain Peter Towsend and military protection officers. The entire group returned to Buckingham palace at 01:00 hrs on May 9th.

Screenwriters Trevor de Silva and Kevin Hood put that evening outing in a comedy-drama cinematic format and added some fictional adventures of their own.

We meet Princess Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon), the future queen, and her sister Margaret (Bel Powley), or P2 as she is known in the palace, trying to get permission to go out that night and celebrate among “the people”. Their mother Elizabeth (Emily Watson)  refuses, but the father King George VI (Rupert Everett) finally caves in and thus opens the plot to a merry-go-round of two young girls trying to lose their military escorts, sampling variety of alcoholic drinks, dancing the Lindy, all while pretending to travel incognito.

Most of “A Royal Night Out” evolves around the circus like atmosphere and the great joy celebrated by British people in London during one night that the young lasses must had never forgotten. The film was photographed by Christophe Beaucarne, using locations in East Riding, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, England and Hotel Metropole in Brussels.

Sarah Gadon portrays the future queen in a most respectable manner, while Bell Powley shows a giggly bouncy Princes Margaret who can’t stop drinking and ends up intoxicated.Emily Watson plays the Queen Mother as a woman who is concerned mostly with appropriateness, while Rupert Everett presents King George as a royal with a normal speech (in real life he had a speech problem), while smoking cigarettes on every occasion.

We already know what the future will hold for these characters: King George will die in 1952, at age 56, thanks to a heavy smoking habit; The same fate will fall upon Princess Margaret, who will die at age 71; and Elizabeth? She will become queen, upon her father’s death, and will enjoy long life till age 89 and beyond.

I was looking forward to viewing A Royal Night Out” but was deeply disappointed to find out that it was “Much Ado About Nothing”.

Rated PG-13. 97 minutes. © Tami Smith, Guest Reviewer

Story: B-

Acting: B

Technical: B-

Overall: B

 

By Harvey Karten

Harvey Karten is the founder of the The New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO) an organization composed of Internet film critics based in New York City. The group meets once a year, in December, for voting on its annual NYFCO Awards.

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