The Lion in Winter (1968) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Having said that, let me hasten to add that it is one of my favorite movies, so if you share my tastes, if you like Masterpiece Theater, you'll love it.

It takes about three years of English history, from the death of Henry's oldest son in 1183 to the death of his number three son in 1186, and condenses all the intrigues of that period into one night in which the participants scheme and plot with and against one another to establish a continuity in the English kingdom after Henry's death.

The main characters are Henry's other two sons (Richard the Lionhearted and John, the two so well-known to us from the Robin Hood tales, and all the derivatives thereof), Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the seventeen year old French king, Philip, who was in the English court without any advisors or attendants, and speaking perfect unaccented English. (While probably not 100% accurate, this is reasonably reflective of the actual relationship between the two families at the time.)

Let's add a  brief description of  Eleanor of Aquitaine's role in this play. Although she was Henry's wife, she had previously been the wife of the French king, and she also had her own independent kingdom, which was one of the richest on the continent. She may have loved Henry and he her at some time, but after bearing him some children, she got back into the whole manipulation of power thing, and at one time she actually led a rebellion against Henry! This caused her to spend the last years of her life imprisoned by her own husband.   

In the setting of the movie, Henry has set her free temporarily, for a Christmas reunion of the English and French royal families. It's unlikely that the real Henry would be so foolish, for surely she would try to conspire with one or more of her sons or with the French king to usurp Henry. If nothing else, she would make his life miserable. Henry had mixed feelings about her because of their long life together, but her sons uniformly hated the scheming old crone. The script justifies her presence there because Henry needed her to sign over Aquitaine to him so he could assign it to one of his sons. I forget which, but probably John.

Well, various different combinations of people do conspire against Henry, as they did in real life. (The French king and Richard joined their armies together against Henry at one point.)

In the movie's condensed version of history, they all exult in the conspiracies, like chessmasters before the table, everyone but John thinking dozens of moves in advance. The aged monarchs delight in causing each other great pain. Eleanor digs her claws into Henry whenever possible, and Henry flaunts his young mistress, the sister of the French king, whom Eleanor raised with her own children!

The film received numerous acting awards, and deservedly so. The filmmakers assembled a magnificent cast. In the role for which her entire life prepared her, 61 year old Kate Hepburn played 61 year old Eleanor of Aquitaine to perfection, and won a Best Actress Oscar for it. In fact, Hepburn is actually a direct descendant of Eleanor from two different lines, both Eleanor's French children and her English children, so she was literally born to play this role at age 61. The rest of the cast included Peter O'Toole as Henry, Nigel Terry as John, Timothy Dalton as the young French King (he was actually 22 at the time), and Anthony Hopkins as Richard.

I mentioned earlier that the script had some problems. In addition to the unthinkable possibility that the Henry of this script would trust his beloved kingdom to his moronic John, there is also the static artificiality of a stage play. There is one scene where everyone in the entire frigging cast is hiding behind curtains, listening to everyone else, and revealing themselves dramatically one at a time as the conversation drew them in. 

Move along, too silly.

The casting actually had some problems as well. Think for a minute - Peter O'Toole played Anthony Hopkins' father. Huh? They are about the same age, and I think Hopkins (although slightly younger) actually looked older in the film! Hepburn was 61 at the time, O'Toole was 35. It looked like O'Toole was trolling the old folks' home for companionship. The real Henry was 11 years younger than the real Eleanor, but O'Toole both looked young enough, and was young enough to play Hepburn's son. 

I hope I haven't steered you away from the film if you are a history buff, or if you like witty dialogue and classical acting. The music won an Oscar as well. It has all of that for you, if you count yourself among the Masterpiece Theater crowd. Although the plotting was contrived and artificial, the dialogue is among the best and wittiest ever written. James Goldman won a screenplay Oscar for adapting his own play. O'Toole and Hepburn delivered his dialogue masterfully. 

Some examples of the brilliant dialogue:

Henry to Philip: "Boy, you call yourself a king because you place your ass on purple cushions?"

Eleanor: "Henry's bed is Henry's province. He may populate it with sheep, if he wishes. Which, upon occasion, he has done."

Eleanor: "He has a knife? Of course he has a knife! We all have knives. It's 1183 and we are all barbarians"

Peter O'Toole was nominated for the Best Actor award seven times in only twenty years, but he never won. I know it doesn't seem possible, but he did not win for Lawrence of Arabia, being pitted that year against Gregory Peck's career-defining role in To Kill a Mockingbird. O'Toole's other most brilliant role was basically playing himself in My Favorite Year, but he again was steamrolled by a once in a lifetime performance, this time from Ben Kingsley as Ghandi.

If you want a good trivia fact for bar bets, O'Toole was nominated twice for playing the same character. In Becket, he played the young Henry II. In The Lion in Winter, he played the same king as an old man (although O'Toole himself only aged four or five years between movies).