Anonymous

Directed by Roland Emmerich

(PG-13)

**

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As a conspiracy theory, “Anonymous is ridiculous,” said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. But it’s not dull. A costume potboiler built upon the suspect notion that William Shakespeare might not have written the plays history has credited him with, the movie benefits from fine acting and the capacity of its disaster-movie director, Roland Emmerich, to exhibit at all times “a rollicking belief in its own nutty bombast.” Emmerich’s skill with special effects sure pays dividends, said Amy Biancolli in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The digitally wrought period settings are simply gorgeous.” The cast, too, impresses—particularly Vanessa Redgrave as the “not-so-virgin” Queen Elizabeth and Rhys Ifans as the “despairingly meticulous” blueblood who’s supposedly knocking out Hamlet and Macbeth while carrying on an affair with the queen. It’s still a sad reflection of our time that history and Shakespeare are “apparently only marketable via Da Vinci Code conspiratorial jabbering,” said Nick Pinkerton in The Village Voice. While Anonymous is “sporadically enjoyable,” it’s “high camp, nothing more.”