This 1968 historical drama is a disaster. Peter O’Toole reprises his role as Henry II from Beckett but snorts and shouts and Charles- Laughtons it up all over the castle, to no real effect; Katharine Hepburn looks wistful instead of sexy as Eleanor, his captive queen. James Goldman’s screenplay, so chic and sophisticated to the ears of suburbanites, is chock-full of the worst kind of sophomoric fiddling with what Goldman takes to be genuine highfalutin lingo. Borscht-circuit Shakespeare. With Timothy Dalton, Anthony Hopkins, and Jane Merrow.
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