DIANA

Something which I have held to for some time is that an audience will forgive a bad film much faster than a boring one. A simply bad film can have a fascination in itself, a study in how not to do cinema that can, at best, produce genuine (if unintentional comedy). A boring film will simply send an audience to sleep or hurrying for the exits. This film is boring; it has nothing to say and nothing to add about a figure who, during her life and after her tragic death, there was a great deal of interest in. It tried right from the trailer to make this sound like some kind of earth-shattering revelation about Princess Diana (Naomi Watts) yet all this amounts to in the execution is an affair that, whilst no doubt very important to the two participants, holds no dramatic weight for the audience. Personally I think this might be down to the wrong focus, the narrative could have been more effective from the point of view of Hasnat (Naveen Andrews), a hard working doctor whose life is turned upside down by the sudden appearance of Diana and his struggle to be with her. As it is the film focuses almost entirely on the princess who, and let me be quite clear that I am taking about the character presented in this film, is rather boring. It looks like in their rush to make Watts look the part the filmmakers forgot to put in anything of substance for the part. In short its less a cinematic look at lady Di’s life and more a Madame Tussauds waxwork. I’m sorry that’s unfair, Madame Tussauds is actually really interesting. It’s not that there is nothing in the film of merit, Naveen Andrews gives a strong performance as Hasnat and the audience can feel his frustration and pain as the relationship falters. Naomi Watts does her best with the script she’s given and, with a stronger script, might well have achieved more. The scenes with the paparazzi are genuinely unsettling with them circling shark-like, barely held at bay by the royal bodyguards. Other scenes show them as almost sniper-like figures, attaching their camera lenses the way a trained marksman might his rifle scope. In an ironic twist the film starts to mirror some of these qualities, in one scene we see Diana in her crusade against landmines, she is (understandably frustrated) that the assembled press continue to quiz her on her personal life rather than the human suffering caused by landmines. The film then fails to practise what it preaches and completely focuses on her personal life; at no point does the irony seem to have occurred to the film makers. FINAL VERDICT 3/10 as a reviewer I had to stick around till the credits but I wish I could have followed the example of the four or five people who legged it early.