Kidman seemed a natural choice to play Kelly. She manages to soar in several scenes. Hampered by the subpar material, she seems utterly lost, unable to master what could have been the role of her career.

Not so much a turkey as a dodo, Grace of Monaco never takes flight and extinction is probably the best course for it.

This cack-handed snapshot of "Grace Kelly's greatest role" is destined to become another epithet-coining catastrophe, the benchmark by which badder-than-bad biopics will be judged in years to come.

Dahan’s showy direction that overstates every scene; he tries to compensate for an emotionally inert drama with style and instead underscores how affectless the whole thing manages to be.