Anonymous Reviews
Top CriticFile this one in the category of entertaining historical fiction. There are facts here, but one must possess more than a passing familiarity with history to be able to spot them.
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| Original Score: 3/4
John Orloff's screenplay could have used a rewrite by de Vere -- or whomever.
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| Original Score: C-
Knowing that non-Masterpiece Theater audiences will grow fidgety over this sort of thing, Emmerich and Orloff throw in plenty of sword-fighting, bear-baiting, and bodice-ripping.
The digitally wrought period settings are simply gorgeous.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
This is irresistible as self-knowing camp: the players ham it up in high fashion and the script crams at least one lurid revelation into every scene.
What's disappointing about Anonymous is that it isn't dumb enough. Rather than plunging merrily ahead with its fanciful counternarrative, the movie keeps stopping to actually, seriously make its case -- to posit and explain and persuade.
Like vermin, facts here are banished / Logic dispelled, plain motives all vanished ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Anonymous may not convince anyone, but it certainly should entertain them.
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| Original Score: B
As silly as most of this is, Anonymous is undeniably a handsome picture. The costumes are gorgeous, with enough velvet and brocade to make everybody seem downright upholstered.
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| Original Score: 5
Audiences may chuckle. Stratfordians, prepare for conniptions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Take the political intrigue of Elizabeth, add the backstage drama of Shakespeare in Love, and divide by the adherence to fact and logic that propelled 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow.
If you are looking for something more intellectual, and certainly more accurate in its portrayal of a rich period in English history, you will have to go elsewhere.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Apart from these few light moments, Anonymous is a case of ingenuity wasted on an unintelligent enterprise.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
"Anonymous'' is a thoroughly entertaining load of eye candy with solid performances, even if John Orloff's exposition-heavy script practically requires a concordance to follow at times.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Don't let the frilly costumes, courtly language and historical pretense fool you: "Anonymous" is still a Roland Emmerich movie - a blessing when it comes to vigor and a curse when it comes to subtlety, proportion or sense.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Though the cast is energetic and the intrigues diverting, you'll have to distance yourself from reality to enjoy so much outlandish scheming.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The very qualities that fuel the historical hokum of Anonymous -- over-the-top royal intrigue and incest, violent literary backstabbing, frothing conspiracy -- also happen to make for wild entertainment.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
As the Bard probably would not say, Anonymous is some crazy shit.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
It's Shakespeare as B-movie, if you will, or to borrow from the bard, a boffo blast, which I'm pretty sure is from either "King Lear" or "Hamlet."
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
In a movie that rings false at every turn, Ms. Redgrave's Elizabeth is truly and infallibly regal.
Anonymous is no more or less far-fetched than Emmerich's prior efforts. But it is much, much more confusing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Roland Emmerich destroys things for a living. Why not the reputation of a man who lacked the imagination to blow up the Sistine Chapel?
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| Original Score: 2/4
So disappointingly dopey that it's unworthy of anyone's time.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Historians will quibble with the timing and accuracy of a lot of the film, and you know what? Let them. The rest of us can enjoy the performances and the sumptuous look of the movie, which is a lot more satisfying, anyway.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
A vulgar prank on the English literary tradition, a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it's not bad.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Scholarly debate about the Shakespeare Authorship Question has little to do with this tale told by an idio...syncratic moviemaker up to little more than mischief.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Anonymous, far from ascending the brightest heaven of invention, is a muddled, often confusing film, unable to mesh its political and theatrical plotlines. Worse, it undermines its own argument by cramming in too many fanciful possibilities.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
By attempting to weave the fancies of the Oxfordians into a coherent narrative, Anonymous does highlight the over-the-top melodrama inherent in anti-Stratfordianism itself.
"Anonymous" is ridiculous, and like Oliver Stone's "JFK" it sells its political conspiracy theories by weight and by volume. But dull, it's not.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Anonymous is so dubious in its intent and so tangled in its execution, it might have worked better as a comedy like Notting Hill or The Boat That Rocked, where Ifans could agreeably play the fool as before.
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| Original Score: 2/4
A splendid experience: the dialogue, the acting, the depiction of London, the lust, jealousy and intrigue.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Oliver Stone's JFK looks reasonable compared to this.
Dubious history aside, Anonymous is a well-acted yarn that also is a tribute to the unstoppable force of art -- even if it implies that only an aristocrat could create it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
As the initial whiff of scandal eventually gives way to great, repetitive blubbering about the brilliance and significance of Shakespeare's works, "Anonymous" ultimately feels like much ado about nothing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Other than ludicrously pulpy fun, Anonymous, true to its title, ultimately signifies nothing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Historians are already calling Anonymous preposterous humbug, but I found it a complex cornucopia of ideas and panache. You go away sated.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Think of it as a high-end Christmas panto, as a red-faced, enthusiastic cast are put through the paces by their barking, domineering director. Louder, faster, bigger, more!
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
This is high camp, nothing more.
Even though Emmerich is working with ostensibly more refined material here, the ham-handed touch of the man who gave us The Day After Tomorrow... is felt quite heavily throughout.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
The more far-fetched the idea, it seems, the more strenuous the effort to pass it off as authentic.
A well-polished cowpat that will confuse and bore those who know nothing about Shakespeare and incense those who know almost anything.
A handsomely staged and decidedly straight-ahead costume drama under Roland Emmerich's nearly CGI-free direction.
Surprisingly, this is easily director Roland Emmerich's best film.
