The Rose of Versailles is a Japanese anime about Marie Antoinette, her female head bodyguard, and that pesky French Revolution. When it started, I wondered if they read far enough into the notes to realize it didn’t have a very good end for dear old decapitated Marie. But I needn’t have worried since I guess the “Rose” of Versailles isn’t the Queen at all, though you’d be pardoned to think so by the first act.

And that first act delivers a starry-eyed Marie to France where it looks like its going to be her story of decadence and eating cake (side note: as a kid, I thought “let them eat cake” was a pretty good idea!). The head of her security is an long-haired anime gal who we are to pretend looks like a dude… and eventually the film follows her travails as she tries to manage soldiers and not get hitched to some scrub her dad wants her to marry.

It follows her for most of this film… which is fine with me. And it might even have been interesting if everything wasn’t deathly dull, full of the sappiest melodrama, and SONGS you can yawn to. Maybe this kind of overly-florid romance is exactly the kind of thing a subset of anime fans want… but if so, that’s apparently not me. Or maybe it’s just this very bad movie since I do like other romantic anime films I’ve seen (I’m hugging you now, Whisper of the Heart).

If you came for the French revolution, the final act contains some of it (call it Bad Day a the Bastille, maybe). But it doesn’t go all the way and heads aren’t rolling by the time the credits do. Oh well, I didn’t come for the historical details, I guess.

This is simply a bad movie regardless of its medium. I have no doubts that the Japanese teams can do perfectly good European adventures… this just wasn’t one of them. I appreciate the effort to decor up a very glam 1700s France but not the story and characters they shoved into it.

Score: 64