How quickly do you think Eric Bana signed the contract when he was offered the part of a legendary king who gets to bed both Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman? That's a drop-whatever-you're-doing, work-for-scale role for any red-blooded actor. Little did he know that all the passion and "red-bloodedness" of The Other Boleyn Girl was to be left to the viewer's imagination, and that the film he was about to devote a good chunk of his time to would end up as yet another plodding costume drama that fails to breathe new life into an old story. The trio at the core of The Other Boleyn Girl are all strong actors (although miscast historically), but the entire production has an air of self-importance that it never once justifies. Most of us know the story of King Henry and Mary and Anne Boleyn, but director Justin Chadwick and writer Peter Morgan (who mined history for brilliance in The Queen, Last King of Scotland, and Frost/Nixon) don't tell us anything new with The Other Boleyn Girl. The film feels like nothing more than pretty people playing dress up. Only in a movie this poorly made could a decapitation be dull.

Based on the book by Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl romanticizes the love triangle between Mary Boleyn (Johansson), Anne Boleyn (Portman), and King Henry VIII of England (Bana). Mary and Anne Boleyn's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk (an increasingly scenery-chewing David Morrissey), learns of the King's procreation problems (he's had trouble producing a male heir) and figures that Anne would make the perfect mistress for him, but the sassier Boleyn sister comes off as a little too confident for the crazy King, who finds himself drawn to Mary. She nurses him back to health after an accident, and the King orders that both sisters be brought to his court, letting the siblings take care of his wife, the Queen, during the day, while Mary takes care of him at night. Neither sister is happy but Mary does get pregnant. After a scare, she's confined to bed rest, during which Anne makes her move. The rest is a historical hodgepodge of births, deaths, and a little bit of attempted incest. It has the makings for a high-caliber drama (or an over-the-top, enjoyable one like Showtime's The Tudors), but The Other Boleyn Girl just never works.

Chadwick’s casting decisions are across-the-board questionable - why wouldn't you pick at least one Brit for the three main roles? - but that's only one of many problems with The Other Boleyn Girl, a film that practically bludgeons you with the idea that it's important and dramatic without ever convincing you why. Reminiscent of last year's similarly cold costume drama Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Other Boleyn Girl crams an entire Showtime mini-series of activity into one film and never finds a way to draw in the audience. The final reel is so crammed with activity that you almost feel like you're watching a preview for a more detailed movie. Chadwick and Morgan spend so much time setting up the Boleyn sister dynamic that when the serious issues start to "hit the fan," it feels like they're on a dead sprint for the finish line. It's almost like they cautiously adapted the first half of the book and then went every other page for the rest.

Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered if the second half of The Other Boleyn Girl hadn't been so rushed. The team behind the film had their priorities misplaced from the beginning. With casting that valued looks over reality (no offense to the talented trio at all, they're all great actors, but they're not right in this movie and were clearly cast for their visual charms and star power) and a visual aesthetic in which it's clear more time was spent on the costume design than the character development, The Other Boleyn Girl probably never could have worked even without the final act flaws. But you can't blame Eric Bana for trying.