Skip to main contentThis Hawaiian punch wasn't screened for critics, so I went to a weekend matinee, and quickly realized why it wasn't screened for critics.
Princess Kaiulani
WW Critic's Score: 15
A biopic of the last Hawaiian crown princess, whose full name was Victoria Ka?iulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawekiu i Lunalilo Cleghorn. The movie is not this long, but it feels longer, because it is so boring. It transported me into a fugue state of boredom. Sometimes I would close my eyes for a few minutes, and when I opened them I saw that nothing had happened. Q'orianka Kilcher plays the 1890s royal heiress, in a reprise of her role as Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's The New World. This movie, with its extended diversion to a British estate, feels like an encore of the final act of Malick's film, with the lyrical images replaced by excess footage from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter commercials. (Ka?iulani actually rides down the Oahu beach on a white horse.)
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how slow and mannered Princess Kaiulani is. Director Marc Forby seems to have been handed about 20 minutes worth of script, mostly about pineapple farmers seizing political control, and filled the remaining hour with significant pauses. In a representative two minutes, Ka?iulani kisses her suitor (Shaun Evans), then Forby cuts to another shot of them kissing, then eventually she stands up from his lap and squeals in wordless delight. In another scene, a Honolulu newspaper baron reads an article he does not like, and we watch him read the entire article. At the show I attended, much of the right side of the film print was projected out of focus, and I did not bother to complain, because there was nothing to see anyway.
"I don't care that you're a princess," a schoolmarm tells the heroine, in a speech that I think is supposed to be heartless, but instead comes across as good sense. "No one here does." We really don't! Please go away! PG.
Opened Friday at Fox Tower Stadium 10.
WWeek 2015