Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticPractically everybody in “The Princess” has a name, except the princess. Played by “The Kissing Booth” cutie Joey King as an anything-but-passive heroine, the movie’s anonymous eponymous protagonist isn’t a proper character so much as a one-dimensional empowerment symbol: “The Princess” represents the antithesis of every fairy-tale damsel who passively sat around waiting to be whisked away or married off.
She begins the movie locked in the top floor of the castle, wearing a wedding dress and iron shackles, and ends it drenched in more blood than Stephen King’s Carrie, some of it hers, but most belonging to all the men who’ve underestimated her.Over the course of the next hour and a half, “The Princess” hardly stops to catch its breath.
Whatever Disney movies may have led you to believe about royals named Ariel (she sings!) and Belle (she reads!), this one learned Krav Maga behind her father’s back, and she can incapacitate a man twice her size with little more than a hairpin.
When it comes time for characters to open their mouths, screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton draw from a seemingly bottomless bag of clichés.
Read more on variety.com