A movie that is intended for family entertainment, and it achieves that very well with a fun cast and a very British style of comedy.

Would've hit the mark if it was written for todays world, but its 25 years too late!

The book was first published around 1992/3, so quite what the point is of filming it 25 years later, I fail to see, and I wish whoever was responsible hadn't bothered.

Puerile jokes about Charles's ears, the (late) Queen Mother's fondness for horse racing, the (late) Princess Margaret's fondness for cigarettes and gin & tonic - it's all here, and it really doesn't work.

Now top off the whole sorry confection with references to the Princess of Wales still being alive and living abroad somewhere with Dodi Fayed and you start to see how crushingly unfunny and indeed irrelevant this is. It is truly awful.

I've tried to imagine how, or indeed if this might actually have been funny at the time it was written, when some of the characters were still alive and would have meant something to the readers, but I just can't see it.

Not even the excellent cast can save it - it is the biggest turkey of this Christmas.