Victoria & Abdul
In the closing years of her life, Queen Victoria (Dame Judi Dench) strikes up a relationship with an Indian servant Abdul Karim (Ali Fasal). He becomes her "munshi" or teacher and becomes an increasingly integral part of her plans, much to the dismay of her son Bertie (Eddie Izzard) and the remainder of the royal household who plot to get rid of it.
This is probably worth seeing for a typically excellent Dame Judi Dench performance, exhuding world weariness and vunerability. Karim's role feels underwritten, the character tending to spout cliched aphorisms. Adeel Ahktar is on good form as Mohammed, who can scarcely believe the situation he and Abdul find themselves in and has a nice line in comedic indignation. I remain unconvinced by Izzard as an actor though and each time he's on screen I feel he's seconds away from drifting into one of his surrealist routines, although that may just be me.
The film requires you to suspend your disbelief for much of its running time and heads off into total fantasy in its closing act. It's not hard to see why people have taken against the narrative glossing over the worst excesses of the British Empire. But Dench is superb and there are half a dozen laughs in it. I feel like I've described a few films this year as Sunday afternoon TV fodder, but that is basically what this is.
This is probably worth seeing for a typically excellent Dame Judi Dench performance, exhuding world weariness and vunerability. Karim's role feels underwritten, the character tending to spout cliched aphorisms. Adeel Ahktar is on good form as Mohammed, who can scarcely believe the situation he and Abdul find themselves in and has a nice line in comedic indignation. I remain unconvinced by Izzard as an actor though and each time he's on screen I feel he's seconds away from drifting into one of his surrealist routines, although that may just be me.
The film requires you to suspend your disbelief for much of its running time and heads off into total fantasy in its closing act. It's not hard to see why people have taken against the narrative glossing over the worst excesses of the British Empire. But Dench is superb and there are half a dozen laughs in it. I feel like I've described a few films this year as Sunday afternoon TV fodder, but that is basically what this is.
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