Seven years after it was filmed, “The King’s Daughter,” was finally released to the general populous. Based on the 1997 novel, “The Moon and the Sun,” the movie is set in the 1700s with real historical figures such as King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan). 

The story revolves around King Louis XIV’s illegitimate daughter, Marie-Joséphe (Kaya Scodelario), who has been kept in a nunnery with no knowledge of her royal lineage. Louis XIV is getting older and fears that if he dies, France will crumble without his lead. His doctor, Labarthe (Pablo Schreiber), is sure that mermaids are the answer to eternal life. The king’s subjects set off to catch a mermaid so that the king can achieve immortality. After finding the mermaid, they need to wait for the solar eclipse to complete the ritual.  His illegitimate daughter is against the idea of letting the King gain immortality because it would require the death of the mermaid. The daughter is the head music conductor for the king, and she finds the mermaid after it leads her to its cage through music. 

With only a runtime of only 90 minutes, it struggles with glossing over scenes that could have given it some much-needed action. The first example is when capturing the mermaid, which takes place in about one minute. It’s a legitimately breath-taking scene, with an amazing pirate ship and the hurricane-like weather adding to the immersion. However, it’s such a short and rushed scene that you really lose what makes the scenes a good one. 

Another example is when Marie-Joséphe escapes from her upper-story room. It’s assumed she leaves from the window and scales the building, but allowing the viewer to actually watch her plight down the castle would have been much more enjoyable than just leaving you to assume she somehow made it down.

There are instances where the writers leave noticeable plot holes. In the latter half of the movie, there is a scene where Marie-Joséphe needs to move the mermaid to a new cage, but they can’t do it because they can’t allow the mermaid to leave the water because it will die. However, this leaves a plot hole in the fact that they originally caught it with a net, which means it was out of water for at least 5 minutes, so why can’t they just do that again?

There are many things in this movie that make it frustrating, but I’ll give a brief summary of what it did right. First off, the music in the movie is elegant 1700s music for most of the film. They did a great job with the costumes and making the audience really feel like they were in the 1700s. The only actor who really shined was Brosman, who made most of the scenes with Louis XIV bearable.  

In conclusion, watch this movie at your own risk. It’s mind-numbingly boring at times, unreasonably confusing at others, and somewhat funny at very select times (most of which are on accident). Even with its many flaws, the movie tells a mostly cohesive story that could keep a viewer entertained through most of it.

For more information contact Lathan Pearce at [email protected]