Ridley Scott’s biopic Napoleon a major disappointment with odd accents and unintentional laughs

Apart from the brilliant battle scenes and a brave Vanessa Kirby, Ridley Scott’s long-awaited Napoleon biopic ends up as an overstuffed and disappointing mess, writes Leigh Paatsch.

NAPOLEON (M)

Director: Ridley Scott (Blade Runner)

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Rupert Everett

Rating: **1/2

Away from the battlefield, this Emperor has no clothes

Master director Ridley Scott has been around long enough to know that if you make a movie about one of the biggest (brand) names in history, you are bound to disappoint someone.

However, Scott’s long-planned and much-hyped biopic of the legendary French soldier, strategist and self-crowned emperor Napoleon Bonaparte often seems hellbent on disappointing everyone.

Almost everywhere you look, a risk is being taken that stands next to no chance of paying off.

Exhibit A is the flamboyantly strange rendition of the title character, as interpreted by Joaquin Phoenix. The actor elects to use his own speaking voice in the role, which means that the Frenchiest fella that ever lived ends up sounding like a Californian who is slightly surly and semi-stoned

A battle scene from Napoleon.

While Phoenix undeniably conveys the rare combination of arrogance, brilliance and fragility that was both the making and breaking of Napoleon, there are too many moments where the actor loses his hold on the character completely.

Here is just one of those moments. At the height of his powers as a military strongman, Napoleon gets into a big barney with the British Navy, and expresses his exasperation at the enemy by whining “you think you’re so great just because you have boats!”

It is the loopiest, LOL-baiting line you will hear in a movie this year. Perhaps even this decade.

Looking at the production on a purely storytelling level, it soon becomes clear that Monsieur Bonaparte lived too much of a life for a movie that runs two-and-a-half hours.

Scott leaves out all of Napoleon’s childhood, and most of his formative years as a low-ranking soldier. We are bustled through some brief acknowledgments of a difficult relationship with a domineering mum, a brand of political diplomacy that worked until it didn’t, and a desperate crusade to find a woman that will bear him a son and heir.

Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby in a scene from Napoleon.

Tellingly, the two departments within which the movie slows down and allows its audiences a closer look at what is going on almost justify the price of admission.

Firstly, the staging of the key skirmishes that defined both the rare foresight and the fatal flaws of Napoleon on the battlefield is never less than captivating.

Secondly, on a far more personal level, the shrewd examination of Napoleon’s complicated relationship with the one true love of his life, Josephine (an excellent Vanessa Kirby), connects on a level that the rest of the movie does not.

Napoleon is in cinemas now

BOTTOMS (MA15+)

**1/2

General release

Ayo Edebiri stars as Josie and Rachel Sennott as PJ in the funny but patchy Bottoms. Picture: Patti Perret/Orion Releasing LLC

For the first quarter-hour of Bottoms, you are resolutely convinced you are watching the funniest, freshest movie comedy in years. However, that blazing sprint out of the blocks soon tapers down to jogging speed. Later, the whole thing stops being funny altogether for minutes at a time. Luckily, Bottoms never loses an audience’s best wishes for its success, and that is purely down to the two young women occupying its leading roles. The supremely gifted Ayo Edebiri (a standout player on the killer Disney+ series The Bear) and rising star Rachel Sennott have comic chemistry to burn as Josie and PJ, two self-described “lesbian losers” who concoct a winning scheme to become the toast of their high school. By, umm, starting a female-only version of a Fight Club. While it is a wild and wacky idea around which to frame a movie, the concept just doesn’t generate enough jokes to fill that movie. It will probably be regarded as a cult classic in years to come but, right now, Bottoms is a nice try that could have been so much more.

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS (M)

***

Selected cinemas

Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli in The Eight Mountains.

This gentle, contemplative drama was a deserving Jury Prize winner at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and has continued to attract and enchant audiences wherever it has since played around the world. Not hard to see why: the movie’s principal setting is a glorious hidden corner of the Italian Alps, a region so downright pretty that you just want to walk through the screen and spend the rest of your life there. This just might be the future that awaits this tale’s protagonists, two childhood friends who have reconnected as adults to honour the memory of a significant father figure. Together, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) work long and hard on building a breathtaking home made from stone and wood on the striking slopes of the Aosta Valley. While not a lot of note happens throughout the movie, a powerful spirit of friendship, an unspoken need for healing, and all that spellbinding scenery blend together into a satisfying whole. From the filmmaking team behind the acclaimed art-house hit Broken Circle Breakdown.

Originally published as Ridley Scott’s biopic Napoleon a major disappointment with odd accents and unintentional laughs