The Queen is a witty, very dry Stephen Frears film about the almost-comical aloofness and generally queer behavior exhibited by Queen Elizabeth II and her family in the wake of the 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Helen Mirren, as noted in my initial review, is fairly wonderful in the title role, and the film does gain slightly after a second viewing. But if you pay to see The Queen this weekend you will notice, trust me, a difference between the projected experience that fills the screen and the one that Manohla Dargis describes and does cart- wheels over in this N.Y. Times review.
As Sigmund Freud once said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
