The King's Daughter

Watching The King's Daughter feels less like a night at the cinema and more like discovering a time capsule buried in the backyard of 2014. Most films are products of their time, but this one is a bizarre hitchhiker from a different era of production that somehow hopped a ride into the 2022 release schedule. It’s a film that sat on a shelf for eight years—long enough for its stars, Kaya Scodelario and Benjamin Walker, to meet on set, get married, and have two children before the public even saw a trailer.

I watched this while nursing a slightly stale croissant that I’d forgotten in the toaster oven, and honestly, the dry, flaky texture of the pastry perfectly matched the "straight-to-video" energy this movie exudes despite its $40 million budget. It’s a fascinating artifact of the mid-2010s "YA-fantasy" craze that arrived long after the party ended and the guests had moved on to prestige streaming dramas.

A Sun King in a Synthetic Wig

The premise is pure historical fan-fiction: King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan), the legendary "Sun King," is obsessed with achieving immortality. Naturally, his solution isn't diet or exercise, but capturing a mermaid (Fan Bingbing) and planning to cut out her heart during a solar eclipse. Enter his illegitimate daughter, Marie-Josephe (Kaya Scodelario, whom you might know from Crawl or Skins), who has been tucked away in a convent. She arrives at Versailles, discovers the mermaid in an underground grotto, and—surprise!—they become best friends who communicate through synchronized swimming and telepathic synth music.

Pierce Brosnan is clearly having a mid-career crisis here, sporting a wig that looks like it was stolen from a 17th-century Dolly Parton. He plays Louis XIV with a mix of James Bond suavity and "I’m just here for the French location shoot" detachment. It’s an objectively ridiculous performance, yet he’s the only one who seems to understand the campy assignment. Meanwhile, the late William Hurt (in one of his final roles) wanders around as a priest looking like he’s wondering if his agent is playing a prank on him.

The Versailles Voucher

If there is a reason to sit through this, it’s the production design. The film was granted rare access to shoot at the actual Palace of Versailles, and it shows. The Hall of Mirrors looks spectacular, providing a level of physical weight that the rest of the film lacks. However, the grandeur of the real-world locations creates a jarring contrast with the CGI. The visual effects have the distinct "uncanny valley" energy of a mid-2000s perfume commercial, particularly whenever Fan Bingbing's mermaid is on screen. She’s a swirl of digital glitter and rubbery physics that never quite feels like she’s in the same room—or water—as the actors.

Director Sean McNamara (who directed Soul Surfer) tries to inject a sense of "girl power" adventure into the proceedings, but the pacing is erratic. One moment it’s a Regency-era romance between Marie-Josephe and a rugged sailor (Benjamin Walker, later seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), and the next it’s a high-stakes heist to free a sea creature. It never quite decides if it wants to be a serious period piece or a Disney Channel Original Movie with a massive budget.

The Ghost of Cinema Past

Released in early 2022, The King's Daughter was a box office casualty of the post-pandemic landscape, but its failure says more about the changing industry than the film’s quality. In the age of The Shape of Water, a "forbidden mermaid romance" needs more than just pretty costumes to land. Today’s audiences are accustomed to the hyper-polished world-building of the MCU or the gritty realism of prestige TV; a film this earnest and technically dated feels like a ghost.

There’s a strange irony in the screenplay being co-written by James Schamus, the man behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. You can see flashes of a more poetic, philosophical story about the cost of living forever, but it’s buried under layers of narration by Julie Andrews. Having the voice of Mary Poppins explain the plot to you is comforting, sure, but it also highlights that the filmmakers didn't trust their own visuals to tell the story.

Ultimately, The King's Daughter is a "curiosity watch." It represents that awkward transition period where studios were still trying to figure out if every YA novel could be the next Twilight. It’s not "good" in any traditional sense, but it is an endearingly messy relic of a decade that cinema has already outgrown. If you’re a fan of Pierce Brosnan being flamboyant or you just want to see what $40 million looked like in 2014, it’s worth a rainy afternoon stream. Just don't expect it to grant you immortality.

It’s a harmless, sparkly adventure that feels like it was rescued from a hard drive at the bottom of the Seine. While the leads have genuine chemistry (again, they literally got married), the film is too tonally confused to be a classic and too technically creaky to be a hit. It’s a reminder that in the fast-moving world of modern cinema, eight years might as well be a century.