Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Princess’ on Hulu, in Which Joey King Is The Queen of Kicking Ass

With The Princess (now on Hulu), Joey King officially transitions from Ramona Quimby to the second coming of Beatrix Kiddo. Well, mostly – the Ramona and Beezus and The Kissing Booth star plays a bride who can whup ass with the best of them, sure, but in this instance, she’s a medieval princess who spurns a cretinous prince at the altar and subsequently has to kick, punch, slash and bash-in-the-nads her way through an attempted coup. Look out systematic patriarchal societal norms, here she comes!

THE PRINCESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Once upon a time in a CGI castle, a young woman in a wedding gown awoke to find herself shackled. She was snatched and drugged and placed on the bed, nuptial pearls and braids down the back of her head. From here on out, I will no longer rhyme, for to do such a thing would be against humanity a crime. This isn’t a fairy tale, anyway, it’s a nightmare for a woman here known only as The Princess (King) – her father the king was forcing her to marry a real sleazebaggano, Julius (Dominic Cooper), for diplomatic reasons. She couldn’t go through with it, jilted the shit out of him, and now finds herself in this predicament. Julius then deployed his Atrocious Guard (Who Don’t Fight Very Good) (note: that’s not their official title) to take over the castle so he can rule the kingdom, which he whines about because it’s nice and diverse and doesn’t have enough white people in it and doesn’t revere tradition like it used to. I’m simplifying his reasoning. He says things that sound a quarter-inch away from modern right-wing extremism, which is pretty funny, because it reminds one that such ideology was backwards even in medieval times.

Anyway, when the cuffed Princess is visited by two members of the Atrocious Guard, she demonstrates her capabilities by unleashing a bloodcurdling rebel yell, dislocating her thumb to shed a shackle and taking the two galoots out in spectacular fashion: hatpin to eyeball, and roundhouse-kick defenestration. Looks like a lotta people are soon going to be doing tons of underestimatin’. Nice dress, Princess, it’d be a shame if someone else’s blood got all over it. How did she become Not At All Like Every Other Princess? She secretly trained with Linh (Veronica Ngo), a local warrior schooled in some martial arts. Princess’ mom, the Queen (duh), knew about it, but her father didn’t, and he surely would’ve disapproved, and there’s still time for him to disapprove, because we’re only like five minutes into the movie at this point, but frankly, if she hadn’t learned to punch and parry and dodge and swordfight, the king and his kingdom would be in real deep crap. She’s pretty much its only hope.

It’s a good thing The Princess’ wedding-day outfit put her in flats, because the castle has a lot of stairs she has to run up and down while mowing her way through the Atrocious Guard and its miscellaneous standout bruisers, who show up here and there like end-of-level bosses in a video game. She eventually finds her boots and sword, tears off her hem and poofy sleeves, and uses her corset straps to choke an attacking imbecile because, you know, symbolism. For the sake of making this all less repetitive, Linh eventually arrives on the scene to help, and Julius’ right-hand woman, Moira (Olga Kurylenko), shows that she can fight like hell too, being nasty nasty nasty with a barbed whip. And on it goes. My advice to anyone standing in The Princess’ way is to not stand in her way.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Princess is Tangled by way of, um, The Secret Society of Second-Born Royals by way of Brave by way of Kill Bill.

Performance Worth Watching: Didn’t I already imply that Joey King’s shift from adorable-kid actor to whupassologist is pretty entertaining?

Memorable Dialogue: Watch what you say around The Princess:

Nameless Member of the Atrocious Guard: Someone needs to teach you your place.

The Princess: I’ve heard that before.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Princess movies are usually wish fulfillment of a different kind – landing the hunky prince, living a life of opulent leisure, maybe side-saddling a horse. The Princess is an empowerment fable in which women teach women how to fight in case they have to fight other women fighters. The men don’t put up much of a fight here; they’re either bumbling oafs, sneering arrogant blowhards or, in the case of her father the king, someone who just Doesn’t Get It. Not that this movie is a complex metaphor for gender politics; it leans heavily on the novelty of its star playing against type while playing a character who’s playing against type. A princess in fancy garb foregoes being demure and proper, instead brutalizing people who deserve it, and we’re entertained by that. It works because nobody’s overthinking anything here.

Director Le-Van Kiet goes about 60/40 in the choreography/flashy-editing of fight sequences, a decent ratio for what appears to be a fairly limited budget. Not afraid to get dirty and sweaty, King gamely throws herself into the fray, and her effort shows via a fairly convincing display of gutsy physicality. There are so so many Atrocious Guardsmen to chop down or string up, so so many, but Kiet gives us just enough variation in set pieces and technique to keep us from griping. My beef is with the tone, which at the beginning of the movie seems like parody, the violence like Looney Tunes, but by the end, it veers into schmaltzy earnestness. It seems as if Kiet and screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton lost their nerve after a while, only reaching 75 percent craziness saturation, when about 80 or 85 would’ve tipped the scale towards exhilarating satire and edgy, over-the-top violence. But as it stands, its lengthy string of assaults and batteries against overly presumptuous men and their vulnerable genitalia is still pretty fun to watch.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Princess sets up the premise and knocks it down with medium-strength spirit and gusto.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream The Princess on Hulu