Review of Grace of Monaco (2014) by Sandra M — 18 Jul 2014

I had been looking forward to this film for some time... And then the reviews from Cannes film festival came forward and trashed it, shoving it back onto the shelf to go unseen. The film itself is not nearly as bad as the critics consensus. However, it isn't good either. While there are some beautiful shots to be found and Kidman has her moments, the overall aim of the film is thoroughly missed. Rather than give us the big picture of a Grace Kelly, we get a snippet of her life, that all in all gets sucked down into boredom with it's poetic excuse about what exactly was "the most important role of her life..." and how we can all wind up in a fairie tale without expecting to do such. Well, I hate to say it, but a clever fairie tale reference about princesses is not enough to make the film work and all bit of romance and wonderment disintegrates before it can gain enough momentum. I was actually expecting this to be super-camp with the words that had been put forth about it. But, it isn't even that. This is not "Showgirls" bad, where dramatic intention becomes pure comedy... This is just simply a miss on so many levels... With the lighting and pause of closeups and soft spoken tone, I could not help but think back to Kidman's Chanel 5 commercial. That commercial in itself is Oscar bait compared to this and possesses practically every ounce of what this film was trying to find . I can't say Nicole was actually "bad" in the film. She pulls off what very little she is given to work with... The blame is to be found on a lousy, cliff's notes version of a script, poor direction, and too much emphasis on "Grace" trying to gain the approval of the French people is tedious. Every time the story was starting to cross the bounds of getting interesting, the glimmer would vanish.

This would have been so much better had they simply told the story of Grace Kelly-- an Academy Award winning actress, swept away from Hollywood and into political royalty to never return to the screen and die a tragic death...

This film is tragic for all of the wrong reasons...

Final Grade: "D".