Diana

What a disappointment Diana is, if only because in titling the film with that name, one expects a more expansive, bigger story about the princess, not the myopic one it has to live with here. Instead of glimpsing what Diana was like as a mother, friend, and woman, we get Diana, princess in love, writ large. She will fall in love with a cardiologist fast and hard, donning wigs to get away from the media, yelling at her beloved's window from a dimly lit street, run barefoot though a park in the middle of night, emotions shattered. This is a romance that's not meant to be and it's a heartbreaker, and this film will make sure you know it.

Watts, an impressive actress in other projects, is a little wan here, deserving a better script that's not beleaguered by cliches. (Try this one on for size: "You don't perform the operation, the operation performs you.") A few moments of insight, as when the princess is shown up close, emotions shifting quickly as she moves from public figure into her private world, do not make up for the missteps. We don't even get much of the Diana who spent time with Dodi Fayed, the man she was in the car with the night she died. What could have been a substantive encounter with the Diana that held such mystique is but a glimpse here, and it's far from fulfilling.