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No one whistles a happy tune in the new movie. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Instead, like the 1946 film Anna And The King Of Siam, which starred Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison, Anna And The King is a costume drama that focuses on the relationship between a widowed English schoolteacher named Anna Leonowens and King Mongkut, the King of Siam in the mid-1800s.
The King (played in the new film by the elegant Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-Fat) hires Anna (Jodie Foster in petticoats and lace) to tutor his 68 children and some of his many wives in English and other worldly topics. His goal was to give his family the information edge they needed to bring Siam (now Thailand) into the modern world.
This actually happened, although not in the melodramatic and overblown manner presented here by director Andy Tennant (Ever After) and screenwriters Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes (Star Trek IV). The real-life tale is embellished for dramatic purposes, especially in the big climax.
Curiously, though, that isn't enough to make Anna And The King energetic or all that interesting. Instead, it is a stuffy, sometimes tedious, overlong epic that only occasionally captures our imagination.
The film suffers most because Tennant miscast his Anna so badly. Foster, looking all pinched and tired and old and even ugly, is a terrible Anna. She plays the character as a constipated shrew, robbing her of our sympathy.
In addition, Foster's flat-voiced accent is unbelievable, especially for an English woman who supposedly spent much of her life in colonial India. You suddenly appreciate the work Meryl Streep does to ensure that her accents are accurate.
As Mongkut, Yun-Fat is much better, summoning up a regal bearing while still infusing the character with enough humanity to make his struggle to understand Anna seem real.
Why this King would ever fall in love with this Anna is left unexplained, however. Especially when we meet some of his Siamese wives. Especially when we run smack into Anna's Victorian English racism and sense of superiority.
Another problem is that some of Yun-Fat's dialogue is obscured slightly in the soundtrack, casting some of his words into the ether. That's distracting.
What is interesting is the lush tropical look of the film (which was shot primarily in Malaysia). The palace grounds of Bangkok were rebuilt on a grander scale than the real thing, but the filmmakers really evoke the 1860s look and feel.
In the end, however, it doesn't much matter. Anna And The King may not be deliberately bad, but it is just a string of pretty pictures that turn into a Siamese snoozefest.
(This film is rated PG)