Adapted from the 1997 historical fantasy novel “The Moon and the Sun” by Vonda N. McIntyre, “The King’s Daughter,” starring Pierce Brosnan and Kaya Scodelario, dares to pose the question: “what if King Louis XIV of France met a mermaid?” If you’re unfamiliar with the source material, which sprinkles elements of fantasy and sci-fi into real historical events, the introductory text explaining that in 1684, Louis XIV has ordered an exploratory mission to the mythical undersea lost city of Atlantis hits like a bucket of cold seawater to the face. Directed by Sean McNamara and written by Barry Berman and James Schamus, “The King’s Daughter” starts at an 11 on the bonkers scale, and unfortunately, there’s nowhere to go from there but down.
Brosnan’s take on Louis XIV is a velvet-clad, swashbuckling royal with a magnificent mane and plenty of eyeliner, a sort of modernist musketeer type. After a scare with a pistol-wielding peasant, he decides to take up his evil Dr. Labarthe (Pablo Schreiber) on his suggestion to capture a mermaid and sacrifice her during a solar eclipse in hopes of harnessing magical healing powers, as one does. This decision comes at the dismay of his priest and adviser Pere La Chaise (William Hurt).
Meanwhile, the king has his headstrong secret daughter, Marie-Josephe (Scodelario), plucked from a convent where he’s stashed her since childhood, and where she’s driving the nuns mad with all of her wanton ocean-swimming. How do you solve a problem like Marie-Josephe? Bring her to Versailles under the ruse that she’s his new composer. Once on the grounds of the sprawling chateau, the carefree, water-loving Marie-Josephe hears the plaintive song of the captive mermaid (a heavily CGI’d Fan Bingbing), kept in an aquatic dungeon guarded by a dashing sea captain, Yves De La Croix (Benjamin Walker).
