The story of former Hollywood star Grace Kelly's crisis of marriage and identity, during a political dispute between Monaco's Prince Rainier III and France's Charles De Gaulle, and a looming French invasion of Monaco in the early 1960s.
Simplistic and heavy-handed, this glamorous biopic of former actress Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) is riddled with clumsy dialogue (“real love is obligation”, offers Frank Langella’s kindly priest) and unintentionally funny moments.
More high camp than High Society, Dahan’s hilariously ham-fisted biopic seeks high-stakes operatic thrills, but provides shrill melodramatic spills.
The toxic reaction in Cannes should offer fair warning: Weinstein's glossbuster is a bust.
You could build a good drinking game around this trite, sanitised account of Grace Kelly, the Hollywood queen recast as a Grimaldi princess. Mind you, if it involved doing a shot every time someone reminded Kelly of her elevated status, you wouldn’t remember very much of the second half of Grace Of Monaco.
Grace Of Monaco is soap opera on a lavish scale.
Kidman’s infamous Chanel No. 5 advert had better clarity of purpose than this.
Verdict: Not good, but not that bad.
One thing’s for certain there won’t be a sequel, though a prequel is never out of the question.
Maybe in years to come people will look back on this as some kind of camp classic, but don’t bet on it.
If you're passionate about not paying taxes, this could be for you.
This bizarrely stilted film about Princess Grace, formerly Grace Kelly, arrives in the UK after an unhappy outing at Cannes, where it revealed itself to be so completely wooden that it's basically a fire risk.
It may seem strange to defend Grace when its own actors are distancing themselves from its likely commercial failure but, taken as old-fashioned, star-driven melodrama, the film has some very strong elements.
Only a shorter running time would be an improvement, by any measure.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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