Much like Steve Jobs, Princess Diana was a much beloved and respected person who have had films made about their lives. And like Steve, Diana's film is a lackluster effort which fails to capture the greatness of the person they are trying to honour. The plot for this film while interesting in a way that we get to find out about an aspect of Diana's life we may not already know about. On another level it is not told in an interesting way as it feels like every other story we've heard about a famous person falling in love with a not famous person. There is no freshness to the story and so does not reach the heights of greatness you would expect of someone so highly regarded. I like to consider myself a very romantic person and I'm a fan of love stories but I think I'm beginning to become a bit more discerning about how they are told.
Naomi Watts is an excellent actress but she has been unable to bring the majesty of Diana to the big screen. Part of the problem for my feelings that this is an average film is Naomi's performance. I did not get any sense from her of why people loved Diana so much. I think she lacked the presence of the character she was playing. One other thing I found odd was that in scenes which were recreations of public footage, like TV interviews, Naomi very closely mimics Diana's voice. However for the rest of the film she does not try to mimic her. Obviously Naomi has watched these scenes extensively as research and perhaps unconsciously began to imitate those scenes. I found it rather amusing. We have not seen Naveen Andrews in film for a while so it was nice to see him back. He does a decent job here but I found his character a bit dull and not sure exactly why Diana falls for him.
I expected more from a film about someone to great. For someone who evoked so much love, this film manages to destroy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment