Reviews by:
@picturesinflow
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The Princess is in the same vein of John Wick (just swap city and neo-noir feel for castle in a medieval countryside and comedy. Tight knit choreography is the main selling point here and they use it to its absolute maximum. Story is at the backend and, at least for me, that is where it should stay, as the main focus is on the feeling of ‘badassery’, and we needed a placeholder story about redemption filled with heroic moments to sell that. Dodgy visual effects (you’ll know when you see them), unbelievable physics with a teenage girl beating men 3 times her weight, not always by speed, but sometimes by strength is purely fanfiction.
Let’s first start off with story which is about a princess filled to the brim with anger about her arranged marriage to a neighbor lord. That was a pretty normal occurrence in ye olden medieval times and most fair maidens were made to do just that, but our main character The Princess (Played by Joey King) will not have it. Due to the fact that not a single boy was born to the kind, he must find a way to continue the kingdom and must therefore search for outside help, hence our noble lord Julius (Played by Dominic Cooper) who so happens to be not such a noble lord after all. One night the whole royal family has been captured thanks to a surprise attack at night, with both the King and Queen captured, and their other younger daughter, all is in the hands of Princess to hopefully save them and earn their freedom.
Remember that John Wick mention at the start of this? Well, that was solely due to the tight choreography, it isn’t to the level of John Wick, but in an ocean of jump-cuts filled with varying quality of CGI effects, The Princess stands out. Using all manner of objects carefully placed in the environment to their maximum extent to disorient each bigger foe or outright end them. The castle is filled with different options to use for upmost strategy with a pretty spacious area between rooms as to traverse them faster and appear in places unreachable in span of time in normal circumstances. However, and this is for those who failed to turn off their brains, a girl is beating fully grown men with full plate armour, this would be advantageous due to her small stature and swift movement, she could hit them in the crevasses in between the armour for maximum damage. Our main character does land many hits in those said weak spots and she almost always goes for them if they are heavily armoured, but at times, she does overpower them with strength which for people standing more than a head above her in height and 2x-3x her weight is just unbelievable.
Now on to the weaker parts and that would be the atrocious visual effects and bad use of green screen in wide shots of the vast countryside. Those shots pull you straight out the film and not in a good way, as mentioned a plethora of times already, if you don’t have the budget or don’t have qualified personnel to make those specific shots great, it is almost always better to not do them. A shot made with minimal practical effects or just skipped over due to budget constraints is always better than a badly realized visual effect. On the other hand, we have the soundtrack which is a mixed bag, and that is mostly that I rarely noticed it, as one would expect it kicks in massively in the midst of battle, but outside one would think there is none.
A film that knows its target audience and for fans of action and by extent comedy, The Princess is a worth watch. Just a side note, try to turn off your brain as only that way can you actually enjoy it for what it is.
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