Directed by: Sean McNamara
Starring: Kaya Scodelario, Pierce Brosnan, William Hurt, Benjamin Walker
Rated PG, 90 minutes
In troubling times like these, times of war and illness and collective fatigue, one of the best things movies can offer is brief respite from the stress of real life. Movies that challenge us intellectually or make pointed political statements are necessary and important, but sometimes we just need to relax, to be entertained by a movie that has no purpose other than that.
If that’s the sort of moviegoing mood you’re in, you’d do well to avoid “The King’s Daughter.” Featuring a headstrong, rebellious protagonist and a glamorous setting in the Palace of Versailles, “The King’s Daughter” might seem to check the boxes of your average crowd-pleaser. The titular young woman, Marie-Josephe (Kaya Scodelario, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”), grows up not knowing who her father is, only to find out that it’s King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan, “The World Is Not Enough”), turning her world upside down. She falls in love; she defies the king; she meets a mermaid and finds the lost city of Atlantis, to boot. But “The King’s Daughter,” which was filmed in 2014 and then held back from theatrical release until now due to financial issues, feels as stale as anything else that’s been left out for eight years. It’s not just dull, it’s mediocre in bewildering ways.
Where does one even begin? The afterimage I retain most vividly is that of the costumes and makeup, cheap in any lighting, making Pierce Brosnan’s Louis XIV look like a washed up ‘80s hair metal frontman and everyone around him like extras shipped overseas from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. Elsewhere, the costuming is just bland. Marie-Josephe’s love interest, Captain Yves (Benjamin Walker, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”), never seems to change his clothes at all.
The story itself is hampered constantly by poor pacing and worse writing. An old rule of thumb in screenwriting is to enter scenes late and leave them early, but “The King’s Daughter” follows this rule to a fault, trimming all the atmosphere and emotion out of scenes until they’re just perfunctory exposition awash in a sea of lifeless, anachronistic dialogue. It feels like watching the outline of the movie, rather than the real thing. The voiceover narration slapped on top (provided by Julie Andrews, to no avail) spoils the movie’s own plot twists within the first five minutes. There’s nothing to discover here, no joy of surprise, only bald and boring recitation.
Another sore spot of note is the film’s music. Marie-Josephe is a skilled musician (she believes at first that she’s been summoned to Versailles to be the king’s composer), but what music of hers we hear feels plain and unremarkable, a disappointing mismatch for what is meant to be an irreverent character. Sean McNamara (“Soul Surfer”) also subjects us to a series of hacky needle drops, all flavorless Top 40 affectation. The song over the end credits, a single by the Australian singer Sia, is the worst of the lot, the cracking of her voice as she belts her platitudes the final irritating twist of the knife in this bizarrely unserious movie.
I could go on: about the distracting continuity errors; about the flat characters at every turn; about the scene in which Marie-Josephe drowns a man, never to be mentioned again. If there’s one silver lining, it’s that Kaya Scodelario and Benjamin Walker, who played lovers here, have since gotten married in real life. And who doesn’t like a happy ending? Though in some ways their real-life romance only highlights the movie’s peculiar brand of failure: even with a mermaid in the mix, the fantasy of “The King’s Daughter” is easily outclassed by reality.
I like to believe that any story can be told well, and I believe that with the right approach, “The King’s Daughter” could be made into the entertaining, breezy movie it deserves to be, the kind of movie that could actually entertain us at this heavy moment. That just isn’t what’s happened here. Sean McNamara and company simply lack the finesse for the job, but good on them for trying. At the film’s climax, Marie-Josephe gracefully dives off a cliff to the sea below and lands, unmistakably, with a belly flop. Sometimes it feels like that’s all you can manage, and that’s OK. It’s rough out there.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 3/4/22.