The Lightweight Appeal of <i>Victoria & Abdul</i>
Judi Dench is again marvelous as Queen Victoria, despite the film’s upbeat and ahistorical politics.
And so it comes full circle. In 1997, Judi Dench—to that point best known for her work on British stage and television, and for her first turn as Bond’s “M” in —vaulted into cinema royalty (so to speak) for her performance as Queen Victoria in the director John Madden’s . The film concerned the queen’s close relationship with a common-born Scotsman named John Brown, a relationship that was regarded with concern and envy by her court
