Why are there so many vampires, for instance, in Southern California? It seems like a missed opportunity to have fun with the predatory nature of the film biz … or something. (The vamps look like guests at a Halloween party.) Nor is it very well thought out. But the finished product isn’t funny or scary. It’s the setup of many a buddy-cop comedy, down to the criminal nemesis bent on revenge: a vampire (Karla Souza) whose daughter was killed by Bud in the line of duty. This leads Bud to be assigned a babysitter in the form of a nerdy union accountant (Dave Franco). But the need to pay for braces for his 10-year-old daughter (Zion Broadnax) sends him crawling back for forgiveness - and the higher premium paid by the union for vampire teeth (evidence of a kill). The job entails numerous rules and regulations, several of which Bud has flouted, leading him to be kicked out of the union and go freelance. On paper, “ Day Shift” sounds promising: Jamie Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, a humble pool cleaner who tends to the suburban homes of the San Fernando Valley, but whose true job is a vampire hunter. “The Princess” might be the most poignant depiction of a figure who will always remain just out of reach it’s definitely the most on-point, even at its most obliquely damning. Interrogating Diana as the “people’s princess” - a moniker that comes to have a discomfiting double meaning by the end of the film - Perkins’s essay becomes less about the mythologized icon of the title and more about celebrity, fandom and the public’s complicity in Diana’s misery and eventual destruction.

Those clips - her fairy-tale courtship with Prince Charles, their “wedding of the century,” the ensuing troubled marriage and breakup, her transformation from fey English rose to paparazzi catnip and, finally, her martyrdom at the hands of the media she both hid from and masterfully manipulated - build into something sad, sobering and surprisingly profound. Eschewing the usual conceits of talking heads, voice-overs and bio-fiction narrative tropes, Perkins simply assembles images from Diana’s life, entirely gleaned from archival footage. But “ The Princess,” Ed Perkins’s absorbing, thoughtful documentary, might be the film we’ve been waiting for all along. Between “ The Crown,” Kristen Stewart in “ Spencer” and tabloid culture’s insatiable hunger for all things royal, viewers would be forgiven for thinking one more documentary about Princess Diana is gratuitous at best - or, being timed to the 25th anniversary of her death, morbidly opportunistic at worst.

Supreme courtship tv tropes