Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

James Hitchcock This film tells the story of Victoria Cleghorn, aka Princess Ka'iulani, the last heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Hawaii. She was the daughter of a Scottish financier and a Hawaiian princess, and became heiress presumptive to the throne on the death of her uncle King Kalākaua. She never, however, inherited the crown because her aunt, Queen Liliuokalani, provoked the wrath of the kingdom's white minority by attempting to reverse the Bayonet Constitution, which concentrated power in the hands of that minority, and to restore the rights of the native Hawaiians. This led to the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893, and the country's subsequent annexation by the USA, one of the murkier episodes in American history and one which still sometimes causes modern Americans to have a guilty conscience. Admittedly, their treatment of the Hawaiians was no more ruthless than their treatment of various Native American peoples over the previous hundred years or so, but they could always justify their behaviour on the mainland by reference to the "manifest destiny" ideology. Supporting the overthrow of an internationally recognised sovereign government by a racist clique of white businessmen and then annexing the country at the behest of that clique was a bit too close for comfort to the European-style imperialism which many nineteenth-century Americans affected to deplore. The film tells Kaʻiulani's story from a viewpoint sympathetic to her and to the Hawaiian cause, but was nevertheless controversial in Hawaii, particularly among native Hawaiians. Part of the reason was its original title "Barbarian Princess", which was deemed particularly offensive, even though it was intended in an ironic way to highlight 19th-century American and European prejudices. Also controversial was the fact that the Princess was not played by a Hawaiian actress; Q'orianka Kilcher is of mixed native Peruvian and European descent and (pace Thor Heyerdahl's eccentric theories to the contrary) the Hawaiians and other Polynesian peoples are not Native Americans but originated in Asia. Q'orianka may, however, have won the role because, to judge from photographs, she bears a certain physical resemblance to Kaʻiulani, despite their different ethnic origins. "Princess Kaʻiulani" is notable as a rare example of a movie which defies normal Hollywood conventions by making the Americans the bad guys and a group of foreigners the good guys; the principal villain is Lorrin Thurston, one of the organisers of the coup which overthrew Liliuokalani and depicted here as an arrogant white racist who despised the Hawaiian people. That apart, however, there is little else which makes the movie stand out from the ordinary. Much of the plot is given over to Kaʻiulani's supposed love affair with a handsome young Englishman named Clive and, apart from being totally fictitious, this development is of little interest compared to the dramatic events which were unfolding in the princess's homeland. None of the acting contributions stand out and, despite its potentially interesting subject, the film rarely rises above the level of a run-of-the-mill biopic. The film ends with by noting that in 1993, one hundred years after the overthrow of Liliuokalani, President Clinton and the United States Congress apologised to the Hawaiian people for America's role in these events, although they did not, of course, follow up their apology by recognising that the annexation had been illegal under international law and that it was therefore incumbent upon America to restore the independence of Hawaii. Bill Clinton must be kicking himself about that missed opportunity. With one stroke of his pen he could have turned the Hawaii-born Barack Obama into a foreign national, Hillary could have gone on to win the 2008 election and Bill could be back in the White House as America's first First Gentleman. 5/10

BronzeKeilani26 This movie was disappointing. As a native Hawai'ian, I was excited to see and support a historical movie detailing a significant period in our history filled with issues that still weigh heavy on us until this day. Most of the movie seemed amateurish and poorly put together but it tells a story so I guess thats what mattered. There are several scenes which serve merely to develop the viewer's sympathy for Ka'iulani in love, begging us to be overly sensitive towards our heroine and an interest in love while in England ..instead of building her character around more important issues that were her life. Characters like Alice, Archie, Miss Barnes are shallow and rather dull. They exist solely to enhance Ka'iulani and funnel the plot towards her own turmoils in romance.Though the dialog has its moments (like the lovely conversation at dinner in regards to food and politics), the whole movie gets sidetracked by just another fated love story... the same one we've seen a million times: Girl and boy from different situations, finances, countries, and dispositions are supposed to hate each other, but end up falling madly in love. There were also many significant events in Ka'iulani's life that are not portrayed in the movie.

Maria After viewing this enlightening and educational movie, I selected and viewed the extra bonus features, saddened and shocked at finding out the detailed history of Hawaii and its royalty. The truths unveiled by the research (done before the movie was made) made my heart hurt.How sad that again, US intervention caused another group of natives to become a part of the United States when clearly, they did not want that to happen. Capitalism raised its ugly head then, as it continues to do so.Even after moving to England (during the unrest in Hawaii) for several years while her people suffered, Kaiulani (Victoria to her Scottish father) mourned the loss of her Hawaiian mother and her beautiful land. This teenage young lady thought and acted like royalty, wanting the best for her people. Too bad that it didn't happen--her aunt, acting queen, was jailed by American soldiers and sentenced to in-house arrest and hard labor. Kaiulani returned to Hawaii and a few years later, died after developing a serious type of arthritis and a thyroid condition.Princess Kaiulani's heart broke twice, when she gave up the man she loved for the land that she loved.

Chad Shiira Burt Lancaster was not an Indian, but the English/Irish actor played a Potawatomi in Max Steiner's "Jim Thorpe: All-American" and one of Geronimo's tribesman in Robert Aldrich's "Apache". Paul Muni had no Chinese blood. Susan Kohner had no black blood. Marlon Brando had no Okinawan blood. In retrospect, now that the cinema is well-represented by all walks of life, such racial performances, however well-meaning, instantly dates the film. Blood is important, but it doesn't necessarily have to make or break the movie if the filmmaker employs red-face(or black-face, or yellow-face) simply as a means to an end(the productions of "The Good Earth", "Imitation of Life", and "The Teahouse of the August Moon" would not have been mad without the prevailing film industry's political incorrect casting practices), in which the masquerading actors aren't consciously foregrounding their appropriated ethnic impersonation through grotesque minstrelism(for starters, Mickey Rooney's take on the Japanese in Blake Edwards' "Breakfast at Tiffany's"). Nowadays, if a minority race gets misrepresented, it's less a matter of outright racism, but rather, a marketability concern, which is best exemplified by the casting of non-Japanese actresses Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh in "Memoirs of a Geisha". Likewise, "Princess Kaiulani", a sugar-coated chronicling of the Hawaiian royal who, due to American intervention, was denied the chance to rule her island nation, would never have been financed with a "Hapa"(a Hawaiian with Caucasian blood). It's a knee-jerk reaction to call this film racist, because the overriding flaw of "Princess Kaiulani" has nothing to do with Q'orianka Kilcher's Peruvian/Spanish background; it's the performance that the filmmaker coaxes out of her, which doesn't clearly delineate a resolute anti-colonization stance. That's because the star of Terrence Malick's "The New World", as Kaiulani, behaves more like her oppressors, than the native Hawaiians she professes to love.By all accounts, Princess Kaiulani was not a coward, so the historical inaccuracy of a colonialist-led insurgency(during a lighting ceremony which introduced electricity to Honolulu) as being the catalyst for her overseas voyage to England, could be construed as an insult to the girl's legacy. Being non-Hawaiian is not the insult. But it's a forgivable offense(in the context of narrative film), since all biopics that depict the past rewrites itself for the sake of clarity and time compression. While in London, Kaiulani complies with Belle Epoque fashion(wide-shouldered blouse with muttonchop sleeves, cinched with a corset and wide belt to hug the waist), which wouldn't have been especially foreign to the princess, who wore European-style clothing back home, but Kilcher's assignation of the fairer "ali'i" suggests that the filmmaker decided against addressing the young woman's "other-ness". Although Kaiulani should look English, she shouldn't literally be a descendant of Queen Victoria, which is how Kilcher plays the princess, as a "barbarian" without the slightest trepidation about gaining entree into a wholly new culture. Kaiulani seems bereft of royal carriage, giggling and mugging for Clive(Shaun Evans), lost as she is in the throes of love, despite her consciousness(that's why the opening scene proves to be problematic) of the governmental tumult back home, having been a first-hand witness to the king's premier being taken hostage at gunpoint by the Hawaiian League before her hasty departure. This big romance dominates "Princess Kaiulani", at the expense of detail surrounding the fallout from the Bayonet Constitution that resulted in the reigning queen(Liliokulani) being ousted from her dismantled court. The film conjures up emotional uplift(big rabble-rousing speeches, an appointment with President Cleveland, the restoration of her title, purely symbolic) to obscure the tragedy that befell the native population, who had lost their land to the missionaries(a fact that gets lost in Kaiulani's small victory of restoring the Hawaiian people's right to vote), and lives(due to disease transmitted from the newly minted foreign landowners). Not enough is made ado about this drastic transference of power. Worst of all, despite Clive being in cahoots with his family to deceive Kaiulani(who should have known that a coup was in the making), she accepts the British gentleman with open arms at her seaside "coronation", going so far as kissing him in front of her people during their darkest hours. That is not how a dethroned monarch would act. "Princess Kaiulani" treats the loss of her personal happiness and kingdom as commiserating catastrophes. Being ethnic for an ethnic role, in this case, Hawaiian, is not nearly as important as acting certifiably ethnic, a non-Hawaiian with an authentic spirit, which is what Kilcher lacks, as a result of he filmmaker's passive attitude towards colonization.