The Princess is the kind of film that feels like it was made by one of those Twitter mash-up bots: take one part Rapunzel, one part Kill Bill, and one part #Feminism. Mash together and what do you get? A story about a princess, whose name is either mentioned so quickly it's easy to overlook or is never mentioned at all, who refuses to wed a cruel sociopath who lusts after her father's throne.
When she rebuffs him at the altar, he kidnaps her and locks her in a tower. However, she soon escapes and works her way through the tower, killing all manner of guards in her path, until she can rescue her family and her kingdom.
The eponymous heroine is played by Joey King, who became a household name after her turn in the Netflix YA rom-com trilogy The Kissing Booth. In The Princess, she gives her all to the indescribably bland role – a literal metaphor for female empowerment brought to life but with no character or heart to back those tropes up.
The sociopathic suitor Julius is played with ferocity by Dominic Cooper, but unfortunately, his outsized performance is funny, rather than menacing. In a better film, Julius would feel quite terrifying; unfortunately, he's in this one.
Julius' right-hand woman, and mistress, is the equally supposed-to-be-menacing Moira, played by bonafide action star Olga Kurylenko. If anyone could bring gravitas to this shambles of a fantasy comedy action movie, it would be her.
However, she suffers the same fate as Cooper – both stuck in a hackneyed, trite movie whose entire merit is its poorly-executed, boring illustration of the tired concept that a woman might not want to be married off like chattel and that without a son, an entire kingdom's lineage is in jeopardy.
Even that categorisation is generous, because the movie itself makes the point so often, so obviously, it begins to lose all meaning. Include the complete lack of specific storytelling (unnamed kingdoms in unnamed lands with no sense of lineage or history), and the whole thing feels rather like a fever dream – except at least in a fever dream you buy the concept you're dreaming.
The Princess does have if not a fatal flaw, then the straw that breaks the camel's back. If you want to remain unspoiled look away, because The Princess spoilers follow.
At the very end, after slaughtering every guard – Moira included – and rescuing her entire family after her father, the king, could do no such thing (though again thanks to a total lack of backstory we have no idea why), he spontaneously decides that wow, you know, women really *can* be leaders. But in order to be so, they have to do all those stereotypically masculine things like fight and kill and take no prisoners.
This need for women to behave like men in order to succeed is a fundamental problem within, well, the world, but also much of contemporary feminist pop culture. Another prime example is King Valkyrie (why is the word 'queen' deemed lesser than 'king'?). And this isn't just a problem that impacts women; men are subject to the same binary thinking that pigeonholes them into being machismo or effete.
(Okay, spoilers are over!)
But The Princess isn't thinking about any of this critically, because like we said, it isn't a film that engages with anything meaningful at all. And worst of all, it isn't even entertaining.
The Princess is now available to watch on Disney+ in the UK and Hulu in the US.
Sign Up for Disney+
Disney Classics Complete Collection
Encanto
Raya and the Last Dragon
Mulan (2020)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Aladdin (2019)
Mary Poppins Returns
![Disney Princess Complete Collection Box set [DVD] [2019]](https://hips.hearstapps.com/vader-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/1622032939-51jLSXD3BBL._SL500_.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:* "Disney Princess Complete Collection Box set [DVD] [2019]")
