A lot has been made about The Duchess that sort of begins and ends with the comparisons between Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and her great-great-great-great-grandniece Diana Spencer, the Princess of Wales. Now, I could have sworn we had all got over this whole nutsiness about Diana. The last time I saw a copy of that special version of Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” it was in a discount bin of other previously-owned discs with about ten other copies. I was working in the electronics’ counter of Zellers when this came out in the September of ’97 and yikes, you’d think that the record company were selling stocks in Heaven for a penny.

The similarities are uncanny, if not otherwise bore-inducing. True, she got into what was basically a three-way marriage. True, she married a man many years her senior and lived with the feeling that his love for her was sort of dubious. And true, she was beloved by the people, in spite of herself, and was the topic of a lot of scorn and gossip. Whoop-tee-do! What makes this Duchess so worthy of cinematic infamy? Well, from where I was sitting, not a whole heck of a lot. Like The Other Boleyn Girl, which was released earlier this year, this film doesn’t offer much in the way of blazing new ground in the corset days of the Battle of the Sexes.

In the lazy, hazy days of the 18th century, young Georgiana (Keira Knightly) is arranged to be married to the aloof Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). The Duke demands only two things: loyalty and a male heir. Wouldn’t you know then that Georgiana gives birth to two consecutive daughters? And when the Duchess strikes up a friendship with Lady Bess Foster, a woman abandoned by her abusive husband, wouldn’t you know that Bess and the Duke, what’s the phrase, get it on? Complicating things is the fact that Georgiana herself has got it bad for future English Prime Minister Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), and if the Duke can have an affair, why can’t the Duchess? Shenanigans ensue.

If I’m impressed by one thing, it’s the lavish production values of film. But if I can be impressed by two things it’s that Saul Dibb managed to make a perfectly whimsical film without proving why this was a story that demanded to be told. The soap opera-ish nature of the story doesn’t offer any real insights into the characters, it seems all really pointed to set up a shouting match about how men can screw around and do what they want while women are bound and restricted to holding up their end. Stop me if you’ve heard this one… The actors and the art directors manage to make up for the scripted melodrama, but by the end of the film you have no greater appreciation for the aristocracy or any of the hypocrisy there in.

So why give this a positive recommendation? Well, I can’t say I was bored. Knightly was great to watch and her charisma is palpable, but if anything, you’re kind of left wondering why she’s married to the stiff despite the arrangement. Fiennes seems to be doing a take on his serial killer role in Red Dragon with a lot talking with a deliberate pause and stealing glances at his wife’s insufferableness with the crazy eye. Truly, this Duke of Devonshire is more like the Douche of Devonshire. And if you can at least see Fiennes as the broadly drawn soap villain that he is you can get into The Duchess enough to enjoy and thrill to the fact that in the end, all adulterers are punished by marrying their mistresses. Those were the days.