Victoria And Abdul Review

Hello there film fans i'm a huge fan of the show Victoria and i'm a fan of Dame Judi Dench so when i heard she was playing an older version of the character in this film of course i was going to watch it and now finally here is my review of the film.

The plot of this film is Queen Victoria strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Indian clerk named Abdul Karim. It's a simple plot yes but for this film and the story it's trying to tell simple is better it's about the friendship between the two people so they don't really need to overcome anything you just need to see them as friends and that's really it.

The film stars the always great Judi Dench , Ali Fazal , Eddie Izzard , Olivia Williams , Simon Callow and Michael Gambon. You expect great performances from Dame Judi and Micheal Gambon and they do deliver in this film but what i wasn't expecting was a great performance from newcomer Ali Fazal. Eddie for me delivers a very mixed performance there are some scenes where he is quite good but then there are scenes where i'd wish they'd done another take.

This film is listed as comedy-drama and i have to say when the film wants to light hearted it can be very funny in the subtle things that it does. The light hearted moments come from how the characters interact with each other they just don't just stop and tell jokes which i thought was really refreshing but then when the film gets into the drama aspect for me it makes the drama have less of an impact and i don't know why that is since the drama elements are all really good.

Now since i've mentioned being a fan of the series Victoria i couldn't help but say that the film should come with a spoiler warning for the series since the Queen does mention who dies and the fact she's seen several Prime Ministers and yes i know what i just said makes very little sense but if your a fan of the show you'll get why i said it right away and i'm sorry for saying it.

Another thing that the film has in common with the show is the fact that they were both filming on The Isle Of Man at the same time so that meant that at some point last year there were two versions of Queen Victoria running around and i think that's just insane.

I couldn't do this review and not mention the fact that the film uses some truly stunning locations i have no idea what the budget for this film was but it must have been huge since each location looks great and each set looks fantastic and what makes this even better is the fact that they got to actually film inside Osbourne House which the real Queen used as a summer house.

The composer of the film was the always great Thomas Newman and i have to say once again he knocks it out the park his score is very subtle it doesn't overshadow any scene but at the same time you know that it's there and for me that's the sign of a great composer.

Overall i can see why people are saying that this film is unimpressive but i truly do like it all of the actors you expect to give a great performance do give a great performance but it suffers in it's dramatic elements so with all of that in mind the film gets a 7 out of 10.