Naomi Watts does a good job portraying Diana, Princess of Wales, in this biopic about the last two years of the Princess' life. Watts has mastered Diana's lilting walk and shy head tilt, and wears her immaculately blow-dried hair and lashings of mascara well. But as well as Watts captures her likeness, it's not enough to elevate this melodramatic drama above what we'd expect from a polished television mini-series.
Taking on the role of "the most famous woman in the world" was always going to be risky for Watts, but the real risk was a script that focused on her relationship with reclusive and private London-based, Pakistani-born cardiologist Dr Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews).
Where Stephen Frears' The Queen featured an intelligent and witty script and performances, Stephen Jeffreys' script for Diana manages to take itself very seriously while also having the tone of a Mills and Boon novel.
In these gossip-obsessed times it's easy to see the appeal of using her love life as a means of revealing the "real Diana", who is a lonely woman struggling to find her identity and purpose after a very public separation from her husband.
The problem is that Diana's two-year romance with Khan makes for dull material. It's a relationship centred on a single conversation, with director Oliver Hirschbiegel staging it repeatedly: will Dr Khan give up his life's work to live in the public eye, and will his Muslim family give their blessing to a marriage?
