The Princess Review: A Violent Fairy Tale With Little to Offer
A fairy tale about a princess using her skills as a trained fighter to rescue herself from the clutches of an evil suitor sounds like a no-brainer. Even with all of the progress that’s been made, there is still a deficit of interesting female-led action films compared to the genre as a whole.
Unfortunately, Hulu’s latest film The Princess manages to take the premise and turn it into a bland story devoid of any real excitement or emotional investment.
Directed by Le-Van Kiet and written by Ben Lustig & Jake Thornton, The Princess stars Joey King as the Princess. No, that’s not a typo, the film just doesn’t bother to give her a name.
But she’s not a regular princess, she’s a “cool princess.” She secretly trains to be a knight but when she’s forced to get married, she rebels and must deal with the fallout from the vengeful Lord Julius (Dominic Cooper).
The film’s biggest flaw is it gives little reason to care about the Princess. Simply giving someone a sword and having them stab a bunch of guys is not quite enough to get the audience invested.
Further working against the film is the choice to tell parts in flashbacks. The film opens with the Princess locked in a tower, and only through the flashbacks do we get the full story of how she got there and how she became such a skilled fighter.
Any possibility for dramatic tension created by her sense of duty as a daughter versus her true calling as a warrior gets diluted by breaking up the story so much.
The first half of the film plays out similarly to a video game, though that might be an insult to some of the rich, imaginative storytelling that the medium has produced. She must fight her way down the tower to reach her family, slaying interchangeable henchman after interchangeable henchmen to get to the final boss/Julius.
More dialogue beyond the mediocre quips the guards attempt would be appreciated here. The second half relies a little more on plot, but it all adds up to what feels like a stretched-out story despite running less than 90 minutes.
The action sequences are the strongest element of the film, and King does a convincing job despite this being her first action movie. If you’re looking for a lot of sword work and people getting brutally murdered, this movie is for you.
Even so, the action sequences end up getting repetitive at times. The film is interested in gruesome and gory deaths but lacks enough creativity to sustain interest in all the killing.
Although not billed as a comedy, The Princess stuffs in enough low-brow humor that the film feels tonally inconsistent. One gag involves an overweight guard being told to check on the Princess and missing her escape because he’s too slow and out of breath to climb the tower.
That’s it. That’s the joke.
Lord Julius amounts to little more than a petulant man-child eager to take over power and hurt anyone who gets in the way of it. His enforcer/mistress Moira (Olga Kurylenko) is a little more interesting and gets to join in on the fight scenes but still fails to break out of the seductress villain stereotype.
The heart of the film is the Princess’s relationship with Linh (Veronica Ngo), the master fighter who trained her growing up and teams up with her to save her family. Their interactions are the least forced in the film, and it makes you wish it spent more time on their history together.
Like most of the characters in The Princess Linh isn’t given much development. Even a character as interesting as her ends up feeling a little flat and stereotypical as the film just goes through the motions of a master-apprentice relationship with a few feeble flashbacks and the Princess’s big hero moment being inspired by Linh.
If this film had premiered 20 years ago maybe it would have made a splash. In a time when audiences are used to complex female characters existing in similar medieval-style worlds like Game of Thrones and The Witcher, it’s not quite clear who The Princess is trying to appeal to.
Ultimately instead of being the inspiring feminist tale you might expect from the logline, The Princess ends up being a reductive take on female empowerment. It’s a fairy tale you’re unlikely to want to revisit.
What did you think of The Princess? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Princess is streaming now on Hulu.
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Breeze Riley
Breeze Riley is a pop culture enthusiast who decided to turn her love of watching too much TV into a hobby writing about it. Although she's a convention-going sci-fi and fantasy nerd, she's just as likely to be watching an off-beat comedy or period drama. She is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic.
One thought on “The Princess Review: A Violent Fairy Tale With Little to Offer”
Oddly enough I liked the movie quite a lot. I don’t usually like this type of over-the-top blood and fighting movie, but for some reason, this one held my attention for the entire film and I actually probably will watch it again.
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