Want to know what a gifted actress Cate Blanchett is?

Watch her keep a straight face throughout Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

How hard can that be?

You go ahead and try.

Exhaustively overwrought, this too-ripe sequel to 1998's Elizabeth -- which announced Blanchett as a cinematic powerhouse -- had me wondering if I'd seen a sillier, fussier enterprise all year.

And I saw Hairspray, people.

Picking up nearly 30 years after the events of the original film -- Elizabeth I is in her mid-50s, even though Blanchett is two decades younger -- it's 1585 and, while Spain's Catholic fundamentalists are conspiring to overthrow England, that country's Protestant Virgin Queen has other things weighing on her mind.

And not just the monumental wigs that teeter so precariously upon her lithe frame.

Namely, she's still unmarried and childless and, given her advancing age, is realizing she has to act now on both counts or possibly never again.

Enter Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen, perfectly cast), a charismatic pirate and poet who woos the Queen with his rakish machismo and riveting tales of overseas exploits.

Meanwhile, as the Queen swoons -- at least as much as she'll allow herself to -- her conniving Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), plots to assassinate her and take the throne.

Not a small point, you'd think, but director Shekhar Kapur appears only modestly compelled by the story's political intrigues and impending, cataclysmic war.

Instead, he intractably steers us through Elizabeth's unrequited (and uninspired) romance with Raleigh, who, when rejected by royalty, begins an affair with Elizabeth's favourite lady-in-waiting, Bess (Abbie Cornish). Naturally, this infuriates Elizabeth, who kicks up a tantrum, jails Raleigh, banishes Bess and is left lonely and desperate.

And, oh yeah, at the door? That's the Spanish armada knocking.

(Before you complain about Kapur's revisionist history -- a better term might be fantastical history -- you have to wonder if the masses will care or notice; it's not like he's rewriting Tolkien or making the Orion slave women in the new Star Trek flick blue instead of green.)

As was true of the original, the performances (including Geoffrey Rush, back as Elizabeth's right-hand man) give the jumbled, over-the-top narrative what momentum it has -- particularly Blanchett who, whether outfitted like an opulent Barbie or in shimmering armour, exudes commanding regality.

Yet even she can't distract from the fact that all of this -- the ludicrous love triangle, the religious fanaticism, the assassinations, the hangings, the stabbings, the ship-to-ship battles as the English and Spanish fleets crash thunderously toward each other -- is an awful lot to cram into a slim two hours.

The result?

Everyone and everything -- from history itself to the Spanish, who are reduced to black-hearted kooks, to the battles, to the returning characters -- get short shrift.

Everyone, except the costume designer.

(This film is rated PG)
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