Princess Ka'iulani (2009)
Average Rating: 4.5/10
Reviews Counted: 38
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 31
A middling biopic about an important figure in Hawaiian history, Princes Kaiulani looks and feels like a TV movie of the week and offers about as much insight.
Average Rating: 4.4/10
Critic Reviews: 13
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 13
A middling biopic about an important figure in Hawaiian history, Princes Kaiulani looks and feels like a TV movie of the week and offers about as much insight.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 1,008
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Movie Info
The incredible true story of Hawaiian princess Ka'iulani (Q'orianka Kilcher) comes to the screen in this historical drama from first time writer/director Marc Forby. The year is 1888; a rebel alliance with connections to the American government has succeeded in destabilizing Hawaii. When the fight comes to the royal palace, 13-year-old heir to the throne Princess Ka'iulani is spirited away to Victorian England -- where her royalty holds no bearing on her social standing. As Princess Ka'iulani
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Cast
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Q'Orianka Kilcher
Princess Ka'iulani -
Barry Pepper
Thurston -
Shaun Evans
Clive Davies -
Jimmy Yuill
Archie -
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Will Patton
Sanford Dole
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All Critics (38) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (8) | Rotten (31) | DVD (1)
There are too many swooping violins, too many trite generalizations, too few moments that throw a light on history and turn it into art.
Top CriticAs the doomed princess, Q'orianka Kilcher ... has imperially striking features but limited acting skills.
An uneven film that, by trying to satisfy parents with political drama and older children with a love story, leaves both parties wanting.
Watching Princess Kaiulani, you're not sure whether to weep for the title character or the actress playing her.
Kilcher is lovely. But sadly, Ka'iulani is a perfunctory biopic of the sort one might encounter on television during Women's History Month.
Its story plays like a Hawaiian heritage lesson filtered through the melodramatic artifice of an old Hollywood costume drama.
There's little passion, damn little fire in the belly, and what there is is wasted on a pleasant romance conjured up by the script, aimed at the My Little Pony market.
After watching Princess Ka'iulani, we can barely say we learned much about this historical figure, nor even much of the history of the time.
Looking more like a Hallmark Movie-of-the-Week and reading like a CliffNotes summary of the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in the 1890s, the $9-million historical romance Princess Kaiulani won't raise any eyebrows or ruffle feathers...
Unfolding somewhat like Cameron's Avatar relocated back in time to planet earth, the film ironically excavates a very different homeland security, in resistance to US imperialism. And a rare woman on screen, not living through a man.
Free of insight and depth, leaving us with little sense of the weight of her accomplishments.
Less biography than hagiography, and more suitable to cable TV than theatres.
[Writer-director] Mark Forby tempts us with a little known history lesson of Hawaii but, instead, gives us a generic girl-power teen chick flick. That is not what I want to see.
This absolutely fascinating true story is a rich, romantic and captivating movie experience.
This effortlessly evocative, endlessly ennui-inducing paean to Hawaii's final princess is, ultimately, a dull, Upstairs Downstairs affair.
Historically fanciful and dramatically doltish.
It contains the kind of stultifying, anything-to-avoid-offence approach one usually only finds in biopics of dead saints or live dictators.
The production values are exquisite, (the) attention to detail admirable.
Lacking a sense of historical and personal context.
It's all soap-opera histrionics and historical hash, and the writing is the culprit.
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Foreign Titles
- Princess Kaiulani (DE)
- Princess Kaiulani (UK)
