ANONYMOUS (Roland Emmerich). 130 minutes. Opens Friday (October 28). For venues and times see Movies. Rating: N
Last week Sony Pictures announced it was scaling back the initial release of the literary thriller Anonymous from thousands of screens to 250. Smart move. It’s a terrible movie, and they’re cutting their losses.
But it also makes me want to quote Regan in King Lear and ask, “What need one?”
Roland Emmerich’s silly picture would have you believe that that line, and all those in Hamlet, Macbeth, etc, weren’t written by Shakespeare but by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), who felt he couldn’t be identified as the author because of his social position. But he could pay the vain, idiotic actor Shakespeare (Rafe Spall) to accept the applause.
That’s not even the stupidest thing about Anonymous, which involves burned manuscripts, incest and an affair with Elizabeth I (played at different ages with let’s-get-this-over-with gumption by real-life mother/daughter team Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson) that results in a child.
It all makes The Da Vinci Code seem like a masterpiece. Emmerich directed disaster pics like The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla, so of course the CGI-created Elizabethan England, mob scenes and rain and fire effects come off best.
But the tone is wildly uneven, and Ifans whispers his way through the role, resulting in a different kind of disaster movie.
