At the Movies with Joyce & Don Fowler

Posted 1/26/22

WARWICK SHOWCASE

 

THE KING’S DAUGHTER* * * ½(Lovely Fairy Tale)

A PG rated fairy tale. Complete with a mermaid and a love affair that makes for a delightful movie for the …

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At the Movies with Joyce & Don Fowler

Posted

WARWICK SHOWCASE

 

THE KING’S DAUGHTER
* * * ½
(Lovely Fairy Tale)

A PG rated fairy tale. Complete with a mermaid and a love affair that makes for a delightful movie for the entire family.

Pierce Brosnan plays King Louis XIV, a self-centered monarch who wants to guarantee his immortality by sacrificing a mermaid at the time of a solar eclipse.

Meanwhile, he brings his illegitimate daughter who has been raised in a convent to the palace at Versailles to be married into money, saving France from going broke.

There are beautiful scenes of the palace and surrounding gardens and pools.

The daughter becomes attached to the mermaid, who has magical powers, and the sailor who caught her and watches over her.

How can she save the mermaid and find true love?

That’s the fairy tale story, which is beautifully told, with spaces filled in by narrator Julie Andrews.

The language and humor add to the enjoyment, with nary a naughty word spoken.

It’s a bit corny, but we both loved it.

AVON

 

PARALLEL MOTHERS
* * * 1/2 (Joyce) * * * (Don)

Almodovar, the award-winning Spanish director, gives us another Spanish soap opera with a bit of politics thrown in.

Two single women (Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit) share a hospital room as they are about to give birth.

Middle-aged Janis (Cruz) had a one-night stand with an anthropologist and welcomes a child. Ana (Smit) is a teenager who doesn’t know who the father was and is reluctant to have the child.

The babies get switched, starting a complicated life for the two women.

Joyce liked the story, which has a few twists and turns, while I found it a bit slow and lacking emotion.

Perhaps that is the result of trying to read the subtitles and missing some of the expressions and body language.

There is a sub-plot about the villagers who are deeply affected by the Spanish Civil War, and all their relatives who were buried in the local fields. That’s where the anthropologist comes in.

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