Diana film is ‘car crash cinema’, say movie critics

Critics have savaged Diana, a biopic of the late Princess of Wales who died in a Paris car crash 16 years ago, just hours after its world premiere.

Lead actress Naomi Watts has already defended her involvement in the film, which follows Diana’s romance with London-based surgeon Hasnat Khan.

However, within hours of the premiere, merciless reviews in the British press shattered the party spirit.

The Times praised Watts for doing “her level best with a squirmingly embarrassing script” but said the film was still “atrocious and intrusive”.

“Poor Princess Diana,” wrote Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw. “I hesitate to use the term ‘car crash cinema’. But the awful truth is that, 16 years after that terrible day in 1997, she has died another awful death.”

The Daily Telegraph gave the film two stars — one more than both the Guardian and Times gave — but was also withering in its assessment. “What’s the point of Diana?” reviewer Davis Gritten asked rhetorically.

Based on Kate Snell’s 2001 book, Diana: Her Last Love, the film suggests Diana started dating Dodi Fayed, whom many friends of the princess say was her real love, to make Khan jealous, a claim challenged by many close to the princess.

Diana and Fayed died when the Mercedes in which they were travelling slammed into a pillar in a Paris road tunnel in 1997 while being pursued by press photographers.

Diana and heir to the British throne Prince Charles divorced in 1996 after 15 turbulent years of marriage, which produced two sons, William and Harry.

Watts, dressed in a figure-hugging white gown, was accompanied on the red carpet at London’s Leicester Square by British-Indian actor Naveen Andrews, who plays her on-screen lover.

The British-Australian actress, who came to prominence in Mulholland Drive in 2001, admitted that she had taken a risk by accepting the role of the “People’s Princess”.

Asked if she felt the film would offend Diana’s sons, Watts told BBC TV: “Hopefully, if they get to see the film, they will feel that we have done it in a respectful and sensitive way.

“We try to honour the depiction of her character in the best possible way.”

But on Wednesday, Watts stormed out of a separate interview with BBC radio, apparently offended by one question.

Presenter Simon Mayo tweeted that Watts had “seemed a tad uncomfortable with the questions”.

The film’s producer, Robert Bernstein, claimed that the royal family gave some help in allowing filming in Kensington Gardens, where Diana used to go jogging, but a spokesman for the royals said the area was not under its jurisdiction.