Judi Dench reprises her portrayal of Queen Victoria (Mrs. Brown, 1997) in this true-ish tale of her unlikely friendship in 1887 with a young Indian Muslim (Ali Fazal) who would become for 13 years her advisor and confidant, amusingly befuddling her coterie of stiff-upper-lip, racist sycophants. Stephen Frears’s historical romp is a tad apocryphal, grants the monarch perhaps more political and cultural enlightenment than she really possessed, and deals with serious issues of British colonialism just a little too lightly. But none of that matters in light of the riveting, must-see performance by Dench. (111 min)