Princess Ka'iulani

This film tells the story of Victoria Cleghorn, aka Princess Ka'iulani, the last heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Hawaii. She was the daughter of a Scottish financier and a Hawaiian princess, and became heiress presumptive to the throne on the death of her uncle King Kalākaua. She never, however, inherited the crown because her aunt, Queen Liliuokalani, provoked the wrath of the kingdom's white minority by attempting to reverse the Bayonet Constitution, which concentrated power in the hands of that minority, and to restore the rights of the native Hawaiians.

This led to the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893, and the country's subsequent annexation by the USA, one of the murkier episodes in American history and one which still sometimes causes modern Americans to have a guilty conscience. Admittedly, their treatment of the Hawaiians was no more ruthless than their treatment of various Native American peoples over the previous hundred years or so, but they could always justify their behaviour on the mainland by reference to the "manifest destiny" ideology. Supporting the overthrow of an internationally recognised sovereign government by a racist clique of white businessmen and then annexing the country at the behest of that clique was a bit too close for comfort to the European-style imperialism which many nineteenth-century Americans affected to deplore.

The film tells Kaʻiulani's story from a viewpoint sympathetic to her and to the Hawaiian cause, but was nevertheless controversial in Hawaii, particularly among native Hawaiians. Part of the reason was its original title "Barbarian Princess", which was deemed particularly offensive, even though it was intended in an ironic way to highlight 19th-century American and European prejudices. Also controversial was the fact that the Princess was not played by a Hawaiian actress; Q'orianka Kilcher is of mixed native Peruvian and European descent and (pace Thor Heyerdahl's eccentric theories to the contrary) the Hawaiians and other Polynesian peoples are not Native Americans but originated in Asia. Q'orianka may, however, have won the role because, to judge from photographs, she bears a certain physical resemblance to Kaʻiulani, despite their different ethnic origins.

"Princess Kaʻiulani" is notable as a rare example of a movie which defies normal Hollywood conventions by making the Americans the bad guys and a group of foreigners the good guys; the principal villain is Lorrin Thurston, one of the organisers of the coup which overthrew Liliuokalani and depicted here as an arrogant white racist who despised the Hawaiian people. That apart, however, there is little else which makes the movie stand out from the ordinary. Much of the plot is given over to Kaʻiulani's supposed love affair with a handsome young Englishman named Clive and, apart from being totally fictitious, this development is of little interest compared to the dramatic events which were unfolding in the princess's homeland. None of the acting contributions stand out and, despite its potentially interesting subject, the film rarely rises above the level of a run-of-the-mill biopic.

The film ends with by noting that in 1993, one hundred years after the overthrow of Liliuokalani, President Clinton and the United States Congress apologised to the Hawaiian people for America's role in these events, although they did not, of course, follow up their apology by recognising that the annexation had been illegal under international law and that it was therefore incumbent upon America to restore the independence of Hawaii. Bill Clinton must be kicking himself about that missed opportunity. With one stroke of his pen he could have turned the Hawaii-born Barack Obama into a foreign national, Hillary could have gone on to win the 2008 election and Bill could be back in the White House as America's first First Gentleman. 5/10

This movie was disappointing. As a native Hawai'ian, I was excited to see and support a historical movie detailing a significant period in our history filled with issues that still weigh heavy on us until this day. Most of the movie seemed amateurish and poorly put together but it tells a story so I guess thats what mattered. There are several scenes which serve merely to develop the viewer's sympathy for Ka'iulani in love, begging us to be overly sensitive towards our heroine and an interest in love while in England ..instead of building her character around more important issues that were her life. Characters like Alice, Archie, Miss Barnes are shallow and rather dull. They exist solely to enhance Ka'iulani and funnel the plot towards her own turmoils in romance.

Though the dialog has its moments (like the lovely conversation at dinner in regards to food and politics), the whole movie gets sidetracked by just another fated love story... the same one we've seen a million times: Girl and boy from different situations, finances, countries, and dispositions are supposed to hate each other, but end up falling madly in love. There were also many significant events in Ka'iulani's life that are not portrayed in the movie.

The film isn't that great of a film, but the topic is certainly important and rarely seen. The period costumes are good and the tone is equally good, but it's a bit dull.

While this film is very well done stylistically, the scrip took far to many liberties with the history of the truly tragic story of how the peaceful kingdom was literally stolen by American businessmen with the aid of the US government. The romantic elements were pure fiction.

This movie was off-putting for me for more than one reason. To be completely honest, I might actually have enjoyed it had it not been for the casting of the main character. I could not understand this casting, for more than one reason. I could possibly have dealt with the more obvious reason if the actor had been ethically true to the character. But this is not the case, and as such I really was not able to understand what the casting director was thinking. Evidently, the character (the princess) was of mixed race, partly European. As such, the actor chosen to play the role should have had similar ethnicity. The actor is evidently of mixed race, but this in and of itself does not make the actor ethnically correct for the role. Even if the actor, like the character, was 1/2 European. The other half of the actor's ethnicity is that of a particular group indigenous to Peru and some of the countries that neighbor Peru, mostly to the south. This ethnicity is a branch of the indigenous people of America, who entered America from Siberia a little more than 10,000 years ago. This ethnicity has very little in common with the Polynesian people who populated Hawaii, i.e., the indigenous people of the Hawaiian islands. As I tried to watch this movie, I couldn't get past the fact that the main character looked absolutely _nothing_ like what she should have looked like. This _ruined_ the movie, and would have no matter how good the movie might have been in most other respects. Why would the casting director have done this? All too often, movies that cost a lot to make are ruined by inexplicably bad choices made by casting directors.