The Young Victoria Could Provide Coronation for Emily Blunt


It's been a year of ups and downs for Emily Blunt: Though Sunshine Cleaning was one of 2009's biggest indie successes, The Wolf Man was pushed back to next year, and her plan to star as Black Widow in Iron Man 2 was thwarted when Fox instead exerted its option to place her in the Jack Black comedy Gulliver's Travels (forcing the role to be recast with Scarlett Johansson). Still, Blunt has one potential bright spot coming up in The Young Victoria, a period romance where she plays Queen Victoria.

The film's already come out in the UK, where it was well-received, but it'll be handled in the U.S. by Apparition, Bob Berney's new outfit. "It feels like an Anne Hathaway breakout role," Berney told Indiewire. "Emily Blunt could be very awards-friendly."

The challenge for Apparition, then, will be to sell Victoria as a more romantic Elizabeth (a strategy that the Keira Knightley vehicle The Duchess couldn't quite nail last year). Based on this overseas trailer, I'm intrigued if not blown away; helping matters is the fact I'm a big fan of Blunt's, and director Jean-Marc Vallée showed a lot of promise with his last film, C.R.A.Z.Y. It shouldn't be hard to lure elderly Academy members to a costume drama like this one, and it may need their help for general audiences to follow suit.

VERDICT: Interested.



Comments

  • el smrtmnky says:

    they really work that craig armstrong score, don't they? i loved C.R.A.Z.Y, actually. looking forward to see what Vallée does with this material

  • Shell says:

    Yeppers, C*R*A*Z*Y was great, so I will be seeing The Young Victoria largely to see the new Jean-Marc Vallée movie. The fact that Emily Blunt is lovely also helps.

  • Das Quirkster says:

    I saw this about a month ago. It's well made, Blunt is good and Rupert Friend as Prince Albert is very charming. I'm sure properly marketed it could find a large-ish audience.

  • bess marvin, girl detective says:

    i am so sick of these monarch movies. elizabeth, victoria, elizabeth, victoria. i get it, we get it, britain had a lot of rulers. not all of them warrants their own movie. i swear it's this genre that keeps these otherwise boring english roses (emily blunt notwithstanding) working.

  • Lowbrow says:

    Any movie with a Prince Albert is a movie worth watching.

  • Jeff says:

    God, I've been meaning to watch CRAZY forever. I think it's even on Hulu. As for this movie, meh, needs a better title, but Blunt is pretty good I 'spose.

  • Patricia says:

    Gotta agree with the tiredness of English royalty, and I might add, English aristocracy. There are enough anglophobes around to assure that these get made FOREVER. And there will always be an audience for them, unfortunately, including a large part of the academy membership. Not me.

  • Lowbrow says:

    *Anglophile

  • Chard says:

    I too agree. I'm just happy it's Victoria instead of Elizabeth- there have been too many Queen Elizabeth movies too count. I also like that Blunt shares a resemblence to the actual Queen Victoria.