I understand films that just drop you into a moment in time, you’ll see what happens for that short moment and then that’s the end, but that doesn’t mean that I enjoy them.

Spencer looks at Princess Diana when she is trying to co-parent with Charlie for their two boys. In this film we see her go visit the royal family for Christmas and all of the conditions that are included within that and how she doesn’t fit into that world. There’s a lot of callbacks in this film to Henry VIII’s wives and we see Diana go through a lot of turmoil just trying to survive this world.

However everyone always praises Diana as the people’s princess. She is this wondrous woman taken far too soon that did wonderful things for the community and the world, but in this film I found her very unlikeable. I did not understand, especially during the dinner scenes and getting dressed for events, why she couldn’t just comply and had to make small things an issue. I understand she has issues with this family, she has issues with her ex-husband, but she married into this world and clearly she has been in it for a while because William and Harry are both children now, so surely she must understand how it works? Yes she can have her problems with it, that’s not a problem, that’s her problem, but why does she have to make every tiny aspect an issue?

The only scene I liked of Diana in this film was when she interrupts the pheasant shooting where William has gone off to do his first shoot that she doesn’t approve of and takes the boys away from this situation. She takes them to KFC and gives them a normal life for even just an afternoon, but the thing is these boys can never have a normal life. Yes she can try and give it to them as much as she can but that’s not going to happen. I get it was a hard situation with Camilla always being front and centre in Charlie’s mind, but in this film she’s barely referenced or even shown on screen, and so it seems Diana has more of a hatred for the whole system rather than just her husband’s betrayal.

I didn’t really see the point in this film, it didn’t add any new information, it wasn’t as enjoyable as The Crown and as I said it did make Diana very unlikeable. it’s not a film that I would watch again and my only positive I can we say about it, despite it being over 2 hours long, was that time went very quickly and it didn’t drag at all.

What do you think of Spencer?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding