Diana: The Musical

Writers David Bryan and Joe DiPietro are somehow always generous yet trenchant with their rich source material. It’s a fairy tale with a “a pretty, pretty girl in a pretty, pretty dress,” but one with a rotten foundation — a royal marriage less built on love than strategized by cold pragmatism.

Diana: The Musical might make for a fine night out at the theater, but viewed on Netflix, what's billed as a "special presentation" becomes another shiny bauble that ultimately doesn't feel particularly special.

As biography, Diana is shallow and reductive, checking the boxes of an extremely well-known story with numbing predictability. As musical theater, Diana is a forgettable farrago of painfully on-the-nose lyrics and clashing song styles that ventures perilously close to camp.

It’s tolerable, I suppose, if you don’t have to listen to it. Unfortunately it’s a musical so you have to listen to it.

If you want royal intrigue and insight, do yourself a favor and revisit Harry and Meghan's Oprah interview because Diana: The Musical is rather like the royal family itself these days, expensive and pointless.

This is not a considered look at someone’s life; it’s a cash-in that just wants to get to the tragic end, hoping that the audience will convince themselves that they felt something along the way.

This is a Rocky Horror Picture Show of cluelessness and misjudged Judy Garlandification. I can imagine masochists getting together for Diana: The Musical parties, just to sing the most nightmarish lines along with the cast. The rest of us will need a long lie down.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

This is bloody awful, good ****!!! why!!! make this. The music is awful, the acting is mediocre at best, and the writing is terrible.

Diana: The Musical is almost certain to become legend, so dimwitted and pointless is the storytelling, the songwriting and, well, just about everything else, too. Beyond the 'why' of it all, follow 'who', 'what' and, for special reinforcement, WHY????