NiceToSay

Napoleon's rise and fall were a flash in the pan, spanning hardly more than two decades. It was a lively two decades, however, and pulling a story together that did the Emperor, or the people of France, Austria, England, Prussia, Poland, or Russia justice would have been exceedingly difficult. Ridley failed. Outside of the beautiful set pieces and costumes, the movie was quite devoid of historical detail. There was a fair amount of historical inaccuracy, where there didnt need to be. It was a bizarre move to make this movie about Napoleon and Josephine. I feel like one could watch this entire movie and learn nothing about Napoleon.

The premise of the movie, that a person in their thirties needs to seduce a teenager, was a huge miss for me. Much of the comedy of the movie depends on one being more or less OK with the the situation, so I simply couldn't connect with it. If there was any chemistry between the leads, it was buried by the inherent inappropriate nature of the relationship itself. I just felt bad for the kid, the whole time. They could have easily went with a smaller age gap and completely removed the awkward set up. I'm not sure how this movie is even greenlit, with the current discourse around grooming. It absolutely never would have been greenlit, were the genders of the leads reversed, and justifiably so.