Saw The Young Victoria in Reno today. On the way down 80 through the Truckee River canyon, there was a beautiful finely coloured rainbow set deep in the canyon with the snow covered canyon walls and mountains in the distance behind it. Beauitiful!

As much as this was not a popular film with the professional reviewers - one called it "fluff" - I very much enjoyed it. Granted it is pretty much a script writer's fantasy about the early life of Queen Victoria. Still the acting was excellent - Emily Blunt is wonderful as the young Queen and Rupert Friend is also very good as the young Prince Albert. The costumes are gorgeous as are all the interior rooms of the palaces and the exterior gardens and parades.

The young royal princess faces a bullying father (brother to the King) and controlling mother who demand that she sign over her regency to them before she turns 18 (the year at which she can legally reign) as her uncle the King is aging. She also faces the need to choose a spouse. Her mother wants her to marry a British cousin named George and her other uncle, the King of Belgium wants her to marry his nephew Prince Albert. And then there is the handsome charming Lord Melbourne, who is Prime Minister. She can not in her inexperience and youth, always tell which of these wants to control her and thus Britain and which really is thinking of what is best for her and England.

Very good, very pretty and very enjoyable. Makes me want to find a good biography of Queen Victoria.