DVD Review: Henry of Navarre

July the 4^th is of course a very patriotic day for one nation in particular. Us Brits like to moan about the Yanks now and again because perhaps old rivalries never quite die no matter how close the friendship. We have an even fonder tendency to exchange banter with our French friends across the channel. On Independence Day the story of one of their most fascinating monarchs arrives on DVD.

Henry of Navarre (aka Henri 4) has all the ingredients of an epic historical romp. Its visceral battle scenes, complete with frenetic handheld camerawork as well as sweeping shots, have been likened to Ridley Scott’s iconic set pieces by Variety. Its period details are meticulous and vivid, from costume to setting. Its themes of religious freedom, love and power are at once more inspiring than modern day concerns and still relevant. And of course, as addictive TV dramas such as The Tudors and Rome have proved, no story of royalty and betrayal is complete these days without plenty of nudity and animalistic sex.

Henri, played by Julien Boisselier, is a charmer from childhood. The film begins with the prince of Navarre, a small region of France, paying the girls as a mere boy for a glimpse up their skirts. He goes on to seduce, overpower and caress several other women throughout the course of the film. The first set of bedroom scenes, with a Catholic he is told to marry to secure peace, verge on the violent, fuelled by religious resentment and suspicion. They scratch and bite like tigers just released from a zoo. Henry of Navarre is not a film short on beautiful women or erotic encounters.

But Henri is still likeable despite his cavorting, which prompts his second wife to describe him as a “horny old goat”. Boisselier plays him as a man disillusioned by the role and world he was born into but determined to change things pragmatically. The film begins with Henri leading the Protestant Huguenots against the greater part of France controlled by the Catholic Medici family. Henri is encouraged into a peacemaking marriage in Paris and during this part of the film within the city walls and the Louvre palace, overwhelming tension and intrigue builds, with relationships in the court difficult to decipher. Henri is well meaning but naive and the betrayal eventually comes with the tragedy of the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.

At this point it’s hard to understand why Henri doesn’t flee but eventually he wins the trust of the traitors and escapes successfully. He returns to his roots in Navarre and builds up the strength of his home. By the end of the film Henri is King of all of France, with the price being his religious belief and identity. But despite his growing wisdom, Henri’s childhood innocence and kindness is also preserved by Boisselier’s performance. This is a very modern film because Henri puts aside labels of religion and ancestry to cherish things that really matter in life and leadership; loyalty, friendship, love and freedom.

Henry of Navarre has its faults. It could do with being half an hour shorter but the two and a half hour runtime is more than filled with the substance of Henri’s fascinating life. Not all of the acting is assured, with Ulrich Noethen’s performance as Charles IX too over the top and caricatured regardless of the troubled nature of the monarch. The battle scenes, despite their initial impact, become repetitive. You are carried through it all though by the compelling complexity and emotion of Henri’s story and the appeal of his character. This would appear to be a diverse film faithful to history that both entertains and educates.

The Hangover: Part 2

It’s not as shit as lots of critics are saying it is. But it is mostly shit.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Right? That’s a solid rule of life, tried and tested and formed from extensive experience. We trust such wise old mottos for a reason. They must work.

Well they work to an extent. This sequel takes the rule to the extreme. It takes it much too far. As many have already said, Part 2 is pretty much a scene by scene remake of the original. If you’ve seen The Hangover this will be predictable. The jokes might initially force a smile, a smile of recollection, a hint of the laughter from your first viewing of Part 1. Then they will become torturously tiresome.

Most of the attempts at humour in the film left me absolutely cold. I watched, aware that this was meant to be funny, conscious of idiotic laughter elsewhere in the cinema, feeling completely uninterested. The times that you are tempted to the verge of a giggle feel as if they are due to an uncontrollable infectious reaction, a mindless physical spasm, spreading from a gaffawing buffoon or someone who hasn’t seen The Hangover. Or someone who laughs at the first syllable of country.

Actually on a few occassions, no more than three, I felt compelled to genuinely laugh. For whatever reason, be it my easily shocked innocence or taste for inappropriate jokes, I wanted to let myself chuckle. BUT so appalled was I by the lack of creativity, the sheer cheek of the filmmakers to release a sequel with EXACTLY the same format and plot, I forced myself to conceal my pleasure. Or limit it to the slightest “ha”. Quite apart from the fact I knew in my head it was awful, there were also some gags that strayed over my (usually rather wide) line of decency on issues from sexuality to race.

There are a handful of enjoyable things in Part 2 however. Chief among them is the wife-in-waiting, played by Jamie Chung. She is delightfully pretty and sexy, and not in the crude way you might expect from these films. Her character is not spectacuarly rounded, lifelike or convincing, but simply the stereotypically perfect girlfriend/partner/wife. She is gorgeous, intelligent, caring, understanding, perhaps even submissive. It’s briefly nice to indulge the impossible daydream of having such a devoted soul mate.

Bangkok is pretty much the perfect location for this film. But I’m not going to indulge it any further by picking out the positives. It is mostly irritating. When I saw Holy Rollers, I realised Justin Bartha could act and play interesting characters. Here he goes back to his career of missing out on crazy happenings, this time not on a roof but by a turquoise resort pool, fretting over five star breakfast. Seriously couldn’t they have shuffled the Wolf pack to include him this time? Just shake things up with a little change?

A handful of reviews have speculated that this sequel must surely be a piece of high concept art, mirroring the actual weary effects of a hangover. The first film was the wild night out and this is the comedown. These 102 minutes of my life aren’t refunded with such creative criticism though.

This has turned into a pointless rant. All I meant to say is that the critics are 90% right about The Hangover: Part 2. And the 10% they’re wrong about is not worth your time or money.