Review Roundup: Naomi Watts Stars as DIANA

In the new film DIANA, Academy Award nomiee Naomi Watts plays the beloved former Princess of Wales.

The film, which recently opened in the UK, will have a limited U.S. release on November 1, with expansion planned in subsequent weeks.

The film from Oliver Hirschbiegel and writer Stephen Jeffreys explores how Diana finally found personal happines after becoming involved as a major international champion of human rights. The film is set to hit theaters later this year. Robert Bernstein and Douglas Rae of Ecosse Films produce.

See what the critics had to say:

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:
Poor Princess Diana. 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. This is due to an excruciatingly well-intentioned, reverential and sentimental biopic about her troubled final years, laced with bizarre cardboard dialogue - a tabloid fantasy of how famous and important people speak in private.

David Edwards, The Daily Mirror:
DIANA can only be described as a fabulously awful film. The Queen of Hearts has been recast as a sad-sack singleton that even Bridget Jones would cross the street to avoid. Charting the two years leading up to her death in 1997, the film's a cheap and cheerless effort that looks like a Channel 5 mid-week matinee.

David Gritten, The Telegraph:
But ultimately, what's the point of DIANA? It's hardly fascinating. It doesn't offer new facts about the Princess's life. And it certainly doesn't explain her complexity or contradictions. That would take a different, better film altogether.

Robert Jobson, London Evening Standard:
I was moved by this movie in places. There were a few laughs too, when Diana hid her lover under a blanket in the back of her car. But the abiding feeling at the conclusion was one of sadness, both for Diana and for us.

Fionnuala Halligan, Screen Daily:
It has been over 16 years since Diana, Princess of Wales died in Paris and there is undoubtedly a film to be made about her most extraordinary life. She herself tried to be relevant despite the constraints placed around her and largely succeeded despite the odds; a relevancy DIANA struggles - and fails - to find.

Emma Dibdin, Digital Spy:
Led by a pair of flat performances and featuring some of the corniest dialog you'll hear all year, DIANA is too incompetent even to qualify as hagiography, devoid of insight and - unforgivably - curiosity about its subject.

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