Is Nicole Kidman’s Grace Of Monaco really as bad as you think? Oh yeah

GRACE Of Monaco: The bank balances of rich fat cats are at stake. Only Nicole Kidman’s Grace can save the day. What will she do? Don’t ask. What should you do? Don’t watch.

Grace, Princess of Monaco (Nicole Kidman; centre), in a scene from film GRACE OF MONACO, directed by Olivier Dahan. In cinemas 5 June 2014.

VIEWING Grace Of Monaco is like learning a flock of geese are secretly living inside your local library. It just keeps honking at the wrong times, all the time.

While generally no better nor worse than last year’s famously botched biopic of a royally deceased style icon — yes, that means you, Naomi “Princess Diana” Watts — it is arguably more laughable.

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Nicole Kidman as Grace and Tim Roth as Prince Ranier.

If you haven’t seen a photograph of the late, great Grace Kelly for a few decades and are currently having problems with your eyesight, you just might identify a faint resemblance on the immobilised dial of Nicole Kidman.

Nicole Kidman in a scene from the film.

The likeness is soon snuffed out once Kidders starts mouthing away at a script with all the atmosphere, insight and storytelling craft of a flyer for discount carpet cleaning.

The filmmakers just can’t seem to get over the fact that Princess Grace of Monaco was once the Queen of Hollywood.

Every minute passes in a mild panic that the audience might swiftly forget that the former Grace Kelly sacrificed a major movie career to marry a minor European royal.

And so, the repeated references to real life being her “greatest role” and the incessant urgings that she “play the part” just keep on coming.

Meanwhile, the film itself is going nowhere fast, largely because its idea of drama is dreary in the extreme.

Grace gets offered a shot at a comeback by her old friend Alfred Hitchcock. She really wants to take him up on the offer, but knows her wimpy control-freak of a husband, Prince Rainier (Tim Roth) won’t approve.

Nicole Kidman in Cannes for the screening of <i>Grace Of Monaco</i>.

Anyway, in addition to perpetually nursing both a cocktail and a cigar, Rainier has his hands full with the French. They’re on the brink of taking over the tiny principality of Monaco because it is such a happy home for tax cheats.

With the bank balances of rich fat cats at stake, only Grace herself can save the day. Even though Rainier treats her like a Dior-clad doormat, he needs her to stop the Hollywood malarky and start charming the French into submission.

Nicole Kidman’s Grace is treated “like a Dior-clad doormat” in the film.

What will she do? Don’t ask.

What should you do? Don’t watch.

Grace of Monaco (PG)

Director: Olivier Dahan (La Vie en Rose)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, Frank Langella, Parker Posey, Derek Jacobi

Verdict: One star. The regal has (crash) landed

Nicole Kidman dances with French actor and Master of Ceremony Lambert Wilson during the opening ceremony for the Cannes Film Festival.