DIANA: THE MUSICAL On Netflix - News & Discussion Thread — Page 4

Dolly80 said: "Step aside Springtime for Hitler.

It truly is dreadful. The songs. THE LYRICS.. the wigs.. the horrible dancing ensemble. THE ACCENTS. I don’t know who Judy Kaye was pretending to be, but it was nothing like the Queen.

Poor Jeanna de Waal. She does all she can but she’s on a sinking ship.

Glad to say that this will never set foot in the UK."

If I were William, I'd slap them with a cease and desist.

CATSNYrevival said: "Can he sue? Wouldn’t he need some sort of copyright on her likeness and life story?"

Yo, geniuses! This musical has been around for years. Started in LaJolla before Broadway. If anyone could have legally stopped it, it would have been done years ago. It’s not like this Netflix airing was the first time anyone has heard of it. Geez.

Now that I've finished it, I think the most insulting part was the Diana-Camilla confrontation. That meeting was apparently dignified and brief - of course, though, that's the account Diana gave. This show is clearly uninterested in proving any of the characters with any sort of depth, but what a missed opportunity, and how insane to see them circling each other in a boxing ring.

One of the reviews said that Judy Kaye as the queen looks like Dolores Umbridge. Brutal. I don't know if the show was at all salvageable in any of its iterations, but I don't really see why the queen needed to be in it at all - after all, we do without Philip and the (non-baby) versions of William and Harry. But I guess that was the biggest opportunity to get any degree of a "name" attached to this mess, and I get the impression that the creatives probably feel that "An Officer's Wife" is the best song in the show.

And the James Hewitt stuff. Saints preserve us.

Metacritic Reviews

Alex Kulak2 said: "My favorite tweet about the show:

"This is what someone who doesn't watch musicals thinks all musicals are like""

And therein lies the over-riding problem with these streaming undertakings.

@Boring it's neither here nor there but Netflix did not film it, the production did, and I am pretty confident that the amount Netflix paid to stream it was not a number that would knock your socks off.

I am a poor sap that flew to SD a few years ago to see what I heard was an Evita-like experience. It was not. Just watched it on Netflix to see if they made any changes since their La Jolla run, I didn't see anything major, though not much of the show/songs were memorable (aside from Pretty Pretty Girl, and F@ck me dress). I did notice the changed the beginning of the show. In La Jolla, it started with the Royal Wedding (using a different actress under the veil), and then Diana steps on stage and comments on the moment (something like "at that exact moment, I was thinking, 'what am I doing here?'". I wish they had some more of that, because the story plainly told is so boring. This show needed some sort of device - the story told through the tapes she recorded for the book, or framed around her dresses. I am also not sure if they had the palace in the background at La Jolla. I believe it was just the gates and a black/dark background. Good watch for free, but not Broadway caliber.

Frank Marshall on Why Diana: The Musical’s on Netflix Before Broadway – The Hollywood Reporter

I started watching late last night so I stopped after Act 1. I'll finish it tonight. It's definitely in the "so bad it's almost good" category for me. I have to say that I was mildly entertained. The actress playing Diana has the weight of the show on her shoulders...

As of this hour, the Rotten Tomatoes score is 14% with most of the reviews coming from the UK. There is no audience score, which translates into nobody, for the most part, is even watching this.

@Marlothom

Thanks for confirming what I expected from the comments on this thread. I saw this at La Jolla and pretty much hated it. It’s just misguided mess of a show that really doesn’t seem to say anything that isn’t a cliche. Additionally, the characters as presented in the show do not really have much of the personalities of the real people they are meant to represent.


I have Netflix but I’m not even sure if I could stomach hate watching it again.


I’m still not sure why the production team thought it was a good idea to bring this to Broadway - much less film it. I guess some people have a lot of money to waste.

Showhopper2 said: "Hmm... the production told several times that Netflix filmed it.... And if you watch closely you can also find out by watching the film.

Production Companies
The Kennedy/Marshall Company
Seeker Productions
Apache Digital
Grove Entertainment
The Araca Group


Distributors
Netflix (World-wide) (all media)
Netflix (2021) (World-wide) (video) (VOD)