Grace Kelly (1983 TV Movie) User Reviews

Fairy tale in Monaco

[jotix100 · 7/10 · 23 January 2006]

This made for TV movie was shown recently on cable. Not having seen it before, it proved to be an interesting way to learn a bit more about an American icon who went to live a fairy tale life in a foreign country as the princess of Monaco, that tiny place in the South of France.

Directed by Anthony Page, the story presents the life of Grace Kelly, a woman born of well to do parents from Philadelphia, who made a name for herself as one of the most brilliant actresses working in Hollywood films in the fifties. Not only was she a ravishing beauty, but she projected such a regal figure that becoming a princess seems to have been a natural role for her.

The movie presents several aspects of Grace Kelly's life and her relationship with the formidable Jack Kelly, her father. The romance between her and Rainier of Monaco is something out of a romance novel, yet, they appeared much in love when they got married. The interesting thing about the last part of the film is that newsreel material was incorporated into the film making if feel real.

The performances are good. Cheryl Ladd does an amazing job under Mr. Page's sure hand. Lloyd Bridges played Jack Kelly well. Ian McShane is seen as Prince Rainier. Others in the cast include Diane Ladd, Alejandro Rey, William Schallert, and David Paymer, among others.

The film serves as a reminder that perhaps yes, fairy tales can come true.

Safe, sugarcoated biopic: Medocrity the nth degree

[greensweater · 2/10 · 3 June 2007]

Grace Kelly has always been one of my favorite movie stars, but this biopic did her no justice. There was no real conflict or drama, just the basic thumbnail sketch of her life up to her Monaco marriage. It's a lot like something you would find in an encyclopedia entry on Grace Kelly, but just acted out. You're much better off reading one of the various biographies out on the market if one really wants more detail of the late princess's life.

Cheryl Ladd didn't help matters, she does her best Grace Kelly impersonation, but it just doesn't add up. Of course, I'm one of those people that find it distracting when an actor is playing a famous or historical person, but doesn't look a thing like the famous person he/she is playing. Cheryl Ladd just reminds me of Tippi Hedren a lot (which is perverse, when you remember that Hedren was the actress that Hitchcock replaced Kelly with). Ladd plays her as a happy-go-lucky gal that is always at the right place at the right time (ensuring her acting career, princess-hood etc.), all with a trademark affected upper class accent. The script doesn't allow for much else really. But at least it's maybe a notch less annoying than Jennifer Love Hewitt's "The Audrey Hepburn Story". Maybe.

And grass is green, lakes damp and mountains steep

[JamesHitchcock · 3/10 · 9 January 2013]

In a poem deploring Wordsworth's tendency to fall back upon clichés and platitudes, the satirist J K Stephen berated the poet for informing us "that two and one are three, that grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep". I got a similar feeling while watching this biopic of Grace Kelly. Like another reviewer, I felt that it could simply have been a dramatised version of Kelly's Wikipedia entry.

What the film doesn't do is give us any idea of what sort of a person Grace Kelly was. Biopics of famous actresses from the past, especially of those who were noted for their beauty, often suffer from difficulties with casting, as it is not always possible to find a modern actress who bears the necessary resemblance to the woman she is playing, even with the creative use of make-up. Former Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd as Kelly might not be quite as obviously miscast as, say, Jennifer Love Hewitt as Audrey Hepburn or (God help us) Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor, but even so she is far from convincing. Grace Kelly was almost universally regarded as one of the great beauties of the fifties; I doubt if anyone has really tried to claim Ladd as one of the great beauties of the seventies or eighties. She was also, at 32, rather older than Kelly was during this period of her life. (The film ends with Kelly's marriage at the age of 26).

This discrepancy in looks could be forgiven if Ladd had given a decent performance, but she doesn't. She makes Grace seem like a pleasant person, but a totally forgettable and uninteresting one. We get no idea of just why Grace became one of the most charismatic actresses of her generation and an internationally known celebrity even before she became Princess of Monaco. There is no chemistry between Ladd and the miscast Ian McShane as Prince Rainier. (McShane is best known to British audiences as the rascally antiques dealer Lovejoy from the television series of that name, and is generally at his best when playing working- class or low-life characters; European royalty seems a bit beyond his compass).

Another defect in the film is that it contains no dramatic conflict. A biopic needs to do more than simply narrate the facts; it also needs a narrative structure akin to that of a purely fictitious film, and this can often be supplied by dramatising some conflict or struggle in the life of its subject. A good example is "Florence Nightingale", another filmed biography from around this period starring Ladd's fellow Angel Jaclyn Smith. This film achieves the necessary dramatic tension by making use of two conflicts in Nightingale's life, the external conflict between her and the military authorities, and her own internal conflict between her love for Richard Milnes and her sense of vocation as a nurse. Potentially interesting subjects like her family's initial opposition to her becoming an actress, a profession which her father described as "a slim cut above a streetwalker", or her love for the twice-divorced Oleg Cassini, are skated over. The film totally ignores the fact that Kelly had a number of lovers before marrying Prince Rainier, doubtless because it was an "official" biography, made with Kelly's cooperation. (It was actually released just after her death).

So what does the film tell us? Well, it tells us that Grace Kelly was born in Philadelphia to a wealthy Irish-American family, that she became an actress and a leading movie star of the early fifties and that in 1956 she married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. It tells us that she appeared in a number of films, including "High Noon", "Mogambo", "Rear Window", "The Country Girl" (for which she won an Oscar), "To Catch a Thief", "The Swan" and "High Society". And it tells us that grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep. It could have been so much better; indeed, I doubt if it could have been much worse. 3/10

A goof. In a scene set in 1955 we see a hotel in Cannes with a number of national flags flying outside. Among these is the current national flag of Syria (a horizontal tricolour of red, white and black with two green stars on the white stripe) which did not come into use until 1958. The Syrian flag in 1955 was a horizontal tricolour of green, white and black with three red stars on the white stripe

One of the better bio-pics

[TuckMN · 9/10 · 24 August 1999]

This bio-pic of Grace Kelly (Cheryl Ladd) goes from childhood to her marriage to Prince Rainier.

They could hardly have done a better job.

Ms Ladd is luminous as Grace Kelly and really captures her beauty, grace and charm.

Lloyd Bridges and Diane Ladd as Jack and Margaret Kelly are well cast and do very good jobs portraying her parents.

The rest of the cast is up to the standards set by the leads.

This movie does not sink into the maudlin depths that it so easily could. It handles the life of an American Princess with style.

Grace Kelly

[Coxer99 · 9 June 1999]

Ladd is sharp and right on as the Oscar winning actress, although I felt that the film moved too quickly through her life that it was difficult to keep up with things. Bridges is also in fine form as Grace's tough as nails father.

New View of Royal Seduction

[donnellxq · 16 October 2019]

In real life we of the general public never saw Ranier do or say very much. But if he was anything like the way Ian McShane portrayed him here, then the prince seems loaded with appealing personality that could have swept Grace off her feet as much or more than anyone she might have met in Hollywood.