Mary Queen of Scots does not add much to the medium of cinema, as the risquÃ (C) and avant-garde The Favourite managed to accomplish, but it succeeds as a middle-of-the-road biopic, ready-made for afternoon television and Netflix dates.Mary, Queen of Scots, towered over her contemporaries in more ways than one. These two actresses are delightful to watch and you will put up with this movieâ(TM)s pedestrian storytelling to see more of them. That being said, I enjoyed the deviation, even if we got the overused inaccuracy of the two meeting in person in an abandoned shed, as ALL of these movies and shows tend to do. I will not evaluate that, but I usually subscribe to the idea that Elizabeth viewed Mary as either a threat or a pawn depending on the moment, as all Tudor monarchs viewed their rivals. The film posits a deep respect and admiration between the two feuding queens, which some have described as feminist. She only appears in around a quarter of the picture, but she cuts a deep impression. Margot Robbie is on fire these days and so is her Elizabeth I.

We can split hairs over whether or not Mary had a French accent or we can acknowledge that Ronan brings the haughty feistiness and naivete that historical Mary was said to possess. Saoirse Ronan puts in a valiant effort as the titular doomed Queen. The reason to be here is our two main leads. We have characters hitting the beats and bullet points of their historical counterparts, time displacement to fit a narrative, riders on horseback delivering messages, PG-13 sex scenes, and the usual gamut of British Commonwealth actors filling in as the minor cast. Mary Queen of Scots is the kind of period drama that critics dismiss, and general audiences ignore, but for different reasons. Premium television appears to be the route to go for this kind of material these days, but occasionally a small budgeted picture such as this can eke out a small victory. For every Anne of the Thousand Days and A Man For All Seasons, you get The Other Boleyn Girl.

Movies centering around Tudor history have always been a mixed bag.

By no means a masterpiece, Mary Queen of Scots is an imperfectly paced, straightforward, and entertaining historical biopic of the kind that Hollywood used to crank out in previous decades.

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