Myriam Nys "Grace of Monaco" is mainly bland, polished nonsense, mixed with product placement and name dropping. It wastes your time with random drivel and wanders from one meaningless incident to another. The few ideas it does succeed in having or expressing are unkind, entitled or retrograde. For instance, the viewer is supposed to admire, nay venerate Grace for her brave determination to learn something about the language and culture of Monaco. Can you believe it : she even - gasp ! - talks with some locals !God ! If you're going to make a new and permanent home in another country, the very least you can do is learn the language. This becomes a positive duty if you're married to a member of the royal family. How are you going to represent or defend your new country, if you're unable to walk into a coffee shop and ask for one coffee, black, two lumps of sugar please ? By the same token, all members of a royal family should be familiar with social habits and traditions - it's one of the most basic requirements for the job. But no, the viewer is supposed to adore the Grace character for her pluck, bravery and self-sacrifice. Half-hidden beneath this exhortation there are some pretty nasty assumptions and prejudices. Try : "No American should have to learn a foreign language, it's up to foreigners to learn English". Or : "Rich people don't have to worry about the needs and feelings of proles". Or : "If taxpayers throw you large chunks of money, you should not feel obliged to do something in return". Another idea the movie is trying to sell to you : there is no need to worry about the existence of Panama-like tax havens, provided these havens yield a crop of good-looking celebrities. Still, I for one could live with the thought of the various creators of "Grace" living in undeserved luxury, if that meant that they would never make another movie again.

Tony Heck "At some point every fairy tale must end." Grace Kelly (Kidman) gave up Hollywood in exchange for marriage to Prince Rainier (Roth). Years later she is unhappy and contemplating a return to acting when Alfred Hitchcock offers her a great role. While she is thinking about the movie Charles De Gaulle is making moves to invade and take Monoco for the french. She must now decide if she should return to acting to make herself happy, or help her husband and country fight off the inevitable invasion. I knew nothing about the real story of Grace Kelly and what happened after she left Hollywood so I'm not sure how much of this is accurate so I can't speak to that. Much like the Diana movie with Naomi Watts the movie is good but nothing amazing and not one of the best biopics ever made. The best part of the film is Kidman's performance. The most interesting part to me was the historical events portrayed in this. The french planning an invasion and what Monoco did to try and prevent it. Being a history buff I really liked that aspect and as for the rest of the movie, I thought it was good but not really anything to watch more than once. Overall, a very OK movie with a great performance by Kidman. I give it a B.

2jdv This film purports to be about a "moment in time" and based on "historical events" about Grace Kelly as Princess of Monaco, and it is an utter fabrication from beginning to end. Which would be fine as an imagining but it pretends to be a biopic, and it isn't. It is utterly inaccurate about Grace Kelly herself and the events it presents. It is demeaning both to her and to the history it misportrays. The writer and director obviously have no sense of shame whatsoever and did this film only with an eye on the buck they could make by cashing in on her fame. Fortunately, they lost their shirts on this turkey. Yes, Nicole Kidman and Tim Roth and Frank Angella, as always, did their best and were great. But they were horribly deceived about what this film would be. I think it's fun to reimagine history, but not when you pretend it's fact and completely misrepresent the truth. This film is a travesty of film-making, and a lesson in deception that film-makers should pay attention to. Making fools of us is not fun, or even, in this case, profitable.

Love_Life_Laughter No one who watched Grace Kelly's life unfold could question, seeing the expression in her eyes, that she paid a large price for her ascent to royalty. While this movie is dissed roundly, it is often dissed roundly by men, who focus on the historical details (evidently not accurate down to the letter, while I would guess these same men would overlook similar literary license in say, "The Bridge over the River Kwai.") But this is about a woman who had risen to the height of power in Hollywood, and gave it all up for her family and husband. It is very clear that the Monegasques held her hostage, for so shining an actress would clearly step away from her source of creativity and power (financial, creative, you name it) only when forced. I personally have often wondered if Grace's family, with it's famous athleticism and competitiveness, forced her to a height of so-called "achievement" with a brand of snobbery and narrow-mindedness that overlooked her incredible acting talents and achievements in favor of a traditional role - "snaring" the world's greatest single man "catch" of the time- which of course turned into a nightmare. That is what is strongly implied here and this is a wonderful movie of discovery - watching Grace understand that her life is now a permanent movie role, ultimately her acting ability being used to place Monaco on the world stage. Whether or not Grace was instrumental in somehow saving Monaco from French aggression, this emotional journey rings true. It is the story, really, of every woman who either chooses to or is forced to subsume her own worldly ambitions for home and family, and the price that she pays. A price that men often cannot even recognize, even in the movies. Bravo to Nicole Kidman for this sensitive portrayal of the princess held captive in her castle, choked by her diamonds and weighted by her tiara. Keep them (the men desiring to lock us women up, breeding and smiling) squirming!