'Diana'
(Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, et al / NR / 138 mins)
Overview: 'Diana' takes audiences into the private realm of one the world's most iconic and inescapably public women - the Princess of Wales, Diana (two-time Oscar® nominee Naomi Watts) - in the last two years of her meteoric life.
Verdict: 'Diana' can only be described as a fabulously awful film! The Queen of Hearts has been recast as a sad-sack singleton that even Bridget Jones would cross the street to avoid.
Charting the two years leading up to her death in 1997, the film’s a cheap and cheerless effort that looks like a Channel 5 mid-week matinee. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) should know better.
Naomi Watts – who looks utterly, completely and entirely nothing like the real thing – plays Diana who’s reeling from her divorce with Prince Charles and is now fluttering her eyelashes in the direction of a new man.
Her beau turns out to be heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (who’s already dismissed the movie) with their affair causing a stir echoing up and down the halls of Kensington Palace.
It’s while campaigning for an end to landmines that the pair bicker and then bond. And, amid major Royal ructions, the world’s most famous woman attempts to make her new man jealous by inviting the media to snap her on a yacht with Dodi Fayed.
Much like the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, this is a film nobody would bother going to see if it weren’t for the famous characters.
It’s lazy mid-afternoon stuff.
Naveen Andrews, playing Khan, looks as if he’s just stumbled on to a movie set while Watts (last seen in the execrable Movie 43) displays little of Diana’s nervy fragility. Despite a peroxide hair-job, she looks, sounds and acts nothing like the Princess of Wales. Wesley Snipes in a blonde wig would be more convincing.
As for William and Harry, they only make a small appearance boarding an RAF helicopter. Film fans probably wished there was room for them to make a swift exit too.