SPENCER

VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION! CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

I occasionally wonder what side I'd be on come a revolution. The Monarch or the people? The aristos or the peasantry? Tradition and heritage or fairness and, if not actual equality, at least a little less inequality? Usually I've never come to any conclusion, but this week I went in my local Cineworld to see Spencer and emerged two hours later as Robespierre. Hand me my pitchfork. (Pleasingly, our family Christmas tradition is a screening of Don't Lose Your Head, which I shall watch with extra enjoyment this particular annus horribilis.)

This would basically be one of those cheery, cheesy festive romcoms in which a naive innocent is thrown like raw meat into a family of eccentrics, trapped in a house full of whackos over the Christmas holiday, except that there aren't any laughs in it. Diana (Kristen Stewart, with all the headtilts and breathy voice) treks up to Sandringham to join Charles, Harry, Wills, HMQ and the rest of the gang for three days of stifling rules and suffocating ritual. This is the dress you wear for Christmas Eve snacks, this is the hat you wear for Church, you have to weigh yourself when you arrive and leave to prove how much you've enjoyed Christmas. Or, think of it like The Sandringham Redemption, in which Diana Dufresne spends ages putting up with all the cruelties, hostilities and injustices of the established regime and finally escapes to her own normal life (in this case, sitting on a riverside bench with the kids and a Bucket O'Chicken) in the last reel.

Here's the problem with Spencer: I just plain don't believe it. Even if it's actually a true and accurate portrait of the Royals and/or whatever happened that weekend, I don't believe it (and if it isn't true and accurate, they should sue because these Royals are full-on Ghastly People). Part of it is that the Royals, so distantly removed from the rest of us "real people" that they might as well be space aliens like the House Harkonnen from Dune, don't like uppity newcomers turning up and not playing by the centuries-old rules of a game that's rigged against them anyway. (And it's not as if Diana hails from "real people" in the first place - she literally grew up next door.) Dramatically I just don't buy into any of this, and matters aren't helped by repeated references to Anne Boleyn, including occasional appearances of her ghost, and a Jonny Greenwood hard jazz score that could scarcely be less dramatically appropriate if it had included a Stylophone, massed kazoos and a monkey hitting a bucket with a stick. There are also a few lookalikes in the background (Fergie and Camilla - there's also a Prince Andrew in the end credits but I didn't spot him).

Diana's yearning for some kind of normality in the real world, her rejection of the isolation and imprisonment in the absurdly vast, cold palace and grounds (the police perimeter works both ways), in addition to her own psychological demons and eating disorders: that's all there, along with the sheer grotesquerie of having endless crates of Cordon Bleu food delivered under military escort (did anyone join the Army hoping their duties would involve ensuring that there were enough Duchy Original biscuits to last until Tuesday and that no-one hijacked the van full of apricots?) and the enthusiasm for meaningless blood sports (Diana's futile attempts to persuade Charles not to force Wills into the traditional Boxing Day grouse shoot). It's too much of a jazzhonk-drenched slog to get to the final moments of freedom, and by that point I'd long since given up on it. Not even as good a film as the much-derided Diana. Amusingly, it's shot in Germany.

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