January is often where bad films are stashed, but Associated Press critic Mark Kennedy says “The King’s Daughter” isn’t just bad, it’s a cloying, cliched mess that’s not worth even the slightest risk of contacting COVID-19 to see in theaters
Ek Baar Ki Baat Hai was a film that didn't know what it was. A romantic comedy? Maybe. A period drama? a fairy tale? A fanciful fantasy mixed with royal intrigue? No matter. The makers threw a lot of money on the film and filled it with movie stars. So now we have "The King's Daughter" and all the stars lived happily ever after, counting their money.
January is often where bad movies are placed, but “The King’s Daughter” isn’t just bad, it’s a flashy, cliched mess worth even the slightest risk of contracting COVID-19 to watch in theaters Not there. Another clue? It was shot in 2014 and has just been released. It boosts confidence levels, huh?
The film is set in 1684 at the Palace of Versailles and yet all oddly enough to have a classy English accent and Tom Ford-like costumes. King Louis XIV has found the answer to overcoming his own mortality: a mermaid. Yes, a mermaid—from the lost city of Atlantis, no less—who has healing power. He intends to suck out her life force during a solar eclipse, which everyone knows gives an extra zest to the mermaid slaughter, am I right?
But his plans are complicated by the arrival of his secret, illegitimate daughter, who ties up with the mermaid. She's also a fish out of water: locked up in a convent for decades and unrecognized by court intrigue, where everyone looks like they're in a weird vogue with too much eye makeup spilled over.
Pierce Brosnan plays Randy King with rock star hair, a staunch bully and always a hand on his hip. Benjamin Walker channels his inner Johnny Depp to play a Jack Sparrow-looking dashing ship captain who falls for the cello-playing king's daughter, played by a breathless Kaya Scodelario who, appropriately , the last was in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean".
The rest of the cast includes Pablo Schreiber as an overacting scheming royal advisor and William Hurt - seriously William Hurt - as a priest. He doesn't have to step out of neutral to show that he's the best actor out there, even if he's with a terrible movie agent. And Julie Andrews — the real Julie Andrews — is enlisted as the narrator, thankfully avoiding the quagmire of a darker career by escaping the set entirely.
Speaking of sets, director Sean McNamara has gotten access to Versailles and there's nothing subtle about showing it in a golden light—which feels like hours. (It's "the stuff of dreams," we're told.) An underground grotto, on the other hand, looks like it was designed by glue-sniffing teenagers.
Overall, it's an oddly edited film, with ending scenes, slo-moss added for theatrical entrance on horseback, swimming sequences that try to be genuinely awe-inspiring, at the end. Bad fight choreography and a harrowing short story between father and daughter. The special effects are also pretty silly looking.
Screenwriters Barry Berman and James Shaamus use the kind of stilted, over-cooked language that sounds weighty but is actually a painful foul on paper. “It is the voice of the devil calling you into the unholy sea,” Rachel Griffiths—another star ruined here—is compelled to say as an abbot. "My immortality secures the future of France!" Brosnan is unfortunate enough to receive several bad lines from the bombing. To the banquet: "Life is full of misery, my child. And you have done such kindness."
The hurt can't escape without saying a single thing - "God has adorned you with wings. I only hope you know how to fly," he tells Betty - and he delivers it as best he can. Is. But this is a fish story and the wrong analogy has been used. This is apt for a massive misfire of a film.
"The King's Daughter" Vonda N. McIntyre's 1997 novel "The Moon and the Sun", but owes much to the film "Shape of Water" and "The Green Mile". Why it was ever pulled out of its watery grave is a mystery. It will suck your own life force.