The King's Daughter
The King's Daughter is one silly movie.
An accidental YA parody, the latest feature from director Sean McNamara (Soul Surfer) plays like a bad game of genre mad libs, plugging in random details that clash early and often, rarely in amusing ways. The result is something akin to “Pippi Longstocking is secret princess to King Louix XIV, who schemes to murder a mermaid to become immortal,” a would-be goofy premise that’s bizarrely played straight.
Based on Vonda N. McIntyre’s novel The Moon and the Sun — suggesting that there are two separate works hawking this ridiculous yarn — the film also carries the stigma of sitting around for nearly eight years due to a game of distribution hot potato.
The delay isn’t all that noticeable: the stars look about the same as they do in more recent efforts and the Versailles-set shoot shows off a fair amount of striking, colorful production design. Furthermore, the bright cinematography indoors and around the luxurious grounds often feels in sync with the film’s gaudy court lifestyle, but occasionally clashes with suspect effects work that somewhat date the visuals.
Still, the script and direction would have been just as crummy in 2015 (the film’s initial planned release) as they are today. The concept of the King (Pierce Brosnan) getting to know his long-hidden offspring Marie-Josephe (Kaya Scodelario, The Maze Runner) while he counts the days until a solar eclipse when he can chop up her new aquatic BFF (Bingbing Fan, The 355) plays like separate movies on a collision course, and the constant track-jumping between the disparate narratives drains the proceedings of the tension, romance, and intrigue to which it aspires.
What saves The King’s Daughter from complete disaster is the palpable fun Brosnan and William Hurt (as the King’s royal advisor, Pere La Chaise) have chewing scenery together, particularly during the King’s daily morning confessions where he can’t accurately remember the previous evening’s debauchery — just that he was naughty. These moments border on intentional farce, hinting at a winking approach to well-worn tropes that almost certainly would have been more entertaining than yet another straightforward variation.
Instead, even these cinematic titans are forced to get with the overly serious program as the film stumbles to the finish line in a dopey race against time to save the mermaid and honor true love, all before the astral phenomenon because…three countdowns are more exciting than two? McNamara & Co. don’t appear to have a better answer, other than being faithful to the source material, and their lack of purpose saturates this lazy fantasy.
Grade: C-minus. Rated PG-13. Now playing at Regal Biltmore Grande
(Photo: Gravitas Ventures)
