Free Hawai`i

PRINCESS KA`IULANI MOVIE PANNED IN REVIEWS

New York Times - May 15, 2010

After playing Pocahantas in “The New World,” Q’orianka Kilcher has moved about 5,000 miles west and three centuries ahead for her next feature, “Princess Kaiulani,” thereby cornering the market on indigenous American princesses who sojourned in England, while also dangerously typecasting herself.

At least her role as the pampered, Westernized niece of Hawai`i’s last king in the late 1800s does not require her to dance expressively in buckskin, though there are a few uncomfortable moments involving hula.

The film is an odd hybrid. At times it’s the sort of ridiculously anachronistic period film in which historical characters act like 21st-century teenagers who happen to be wearing hoop skirts.

This is especially true during the long middle section, in which the Hawaiian scion goes to Victorian England for her education and has a giddy, entirely fabricated romance with her hosts’ son, Clive Davies (Shaun Evans).

Over all, though, “Princess Kaiulani” plays like an old-fashioned, stiff but plushly upholstered costume drama, swaddled in gauzy cinematography and swelling strings.

Barry Pepper and Will Patton ham it up as American businessmen scheming to push aside the Hawaiian monarchy. And Ms. Kilcher, having mastered the noble savage in “The New World,” adds the nature-girl aristocrat to her repertory, jutting her chin to assert her moral authority and superior breeding....

What Did The Movie Leave Out? - Find Out Here - BarbarianPrincessMovie.com