En kongelig affære 2012

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: Anyone eagerly awaiting Anna Karenina and Les Miserables shouldn't miss A Royal Affair. Read more

Kathleen Murphy, MSN Movies: 'Affair' is disappointingly conventional, much too decorous and, at two hours-plus, sometimes just plain dull. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Unfortunately it never fully comes to life. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: With its sumptuous settings, urgent romance and intellectual substance, A Royal Affair is a mind-opener crossed with a bodice-ripper. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: A Royal Affair covers plenty of stately ground, all in good time. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: A tragic love story, beautifully told. Read more

Sam Adams, AV Club: At least for a while, Arcel manages to animate the long-settled debate, at least until the inevitability of its resolution becomes too clear to overlook. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Director Nikolaj Arcel gets outstanding performances from all three of the principals, which enlivens the whole affair considerably. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A crowned-heads soap opera that balances effectively between pomp and melodramatic circumstance. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: This Scandinavian coproduction is essentially an old-fashioned period spectacle, offering the tried-and-true pleasure of romantic melodrama in fancy costumes. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: What a piece of work is this historical drama. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: A fascinating, stately thriller. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: History may not always be fun, but, at least in this case, it's fascinating. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The storytelling ... is kind of amazing. Read more

Amanda Mae Meyncke, Film.com: We are drawn undeniably to well-crafted beauty, power wielded for good and romance built upon authenticity, and A Royal Affair has all three in bounds. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: This highly polished costume drama is exceptionally well-made and a model of intelligent restraint, but it is also unapologetically earnest and a bit on the bloodless side. Read more

Michael Nordine, L.A. Weekly: Perhaps there's only so much to be done with a costume drama about illicit affairs and would-be coups. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: The film ends not on a happy note, naturally, but on a moment of hope. Love may not conquer all, but it has a power all its own. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: The film tells an intimate story with an enormous amount of grace. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It does a fine job of dramatizing the pure power of ideas and the attraction of like minds. And what happens when those ideas, and that attraction, runs counter to the pleasures of the most powerful man in the land. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: While it's lavish and lush in all the expected costume-drama ways, A Royal Affair never bogs down in period detail. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Nikolaj Arcel's sumptuous Danish romance looks much like other well-made costume dramas, barring a single, crucial exception: This is the only one with Mads Mikkelsen in the lead. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: "A Royal Affair" is basically a good-looking set of historical Cliffs Notes. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: A Royal Affair is historical drama of the highest order - teeming with big ideas, and anchored by the nicely nuanced performances of Vikander and Mikkelsen. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: As the power behind the throne once removed, Mikkelsen is well-cast as a strong leading man who is also convincing as an intellectual and reformer. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "A Royal Affair" is an engaging and entertaining film, one that might have been great, if only the history were different. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film moves along crisply, looks great and stimulates the brain (I am a sucker for torrid romances propelled by quotes from Rousseau and Voltaire.) Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Although the brazen lovers, bellicose ministers and backstabbing handmaidens are familiar elements, the film is so handsomely mounted that we happily endure the ride until the turning of the screws in the tragic last act. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: For all its incident, A Royal Affair is slow and picturesquely framed - more of a languorously animated coffee-table book than a gripping drama. Read more

Cath Clarke, Time Out: Genuinely engrossing, if a little stiff, and it's only in the drama of the last five minutes that actor-of-the-moment Mikkelsen shows us what he's really made of. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Intrigue and eroticism abound, all of it watchable, none of it particularly exciting. Read more

Nick Schager, Village Voice: Director Arcel handles the material with a stately grace that compensates for the story's predictable trajectory, though humdrum period detail and monotonous pacing too often leave the proceedings feeling only partially aroused. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Even appreciated simply as a little-known chapter of European history, it proves consistently engrossing, edifying and affecting. Read more