It’s been described by critics as “fantastically silly”, a “cornball melodrama” and, by its own director, “a pile of s**t”.

Now, Nicole Kidman’s latest film Grace of Monaco has received the ultimate insult in Hollywood – it will skip cinemas and go straight to cable television in the US.

The film tells the story of real-life actress-turned-princess Grace Kelly who married Monaco’s Prince Rainer III in 1956.

The Monegasque royal family panned the film as a “farce” after its limited release in international cinemas.

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Headed by Kelly’s son Prince Albert II, and including Grace Kelly’s daughters Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie, Monaco’s royals issued a statement saying the film “in no way constitutes a biopic”, Fairfax reported.

“It recounts one rewritten, needlessly glamorised page in the history of Monaco and its family with both major historical inaccuracies and a series of purely fictional scenes.”

Even the film’s director Olivier Dahan criticised the heavily re-edited version of his film – changed by legendary Holllywood producer Harvey Weinstein – and claimed he was being blackmailed into signing off on the altered version.

Prince Rainer III and Grace Kelly on their wedding day in 1956. Photo: Getty

“They want a commercial film smelling of daisies, taking out anything that exceeds that which is too abrupt, everything that makes it cinematic and breathe with life,” Dahan said during the film’s post-production phase.

“A lot of things are missing.”

Critics were similarly unimpressed.

Guardian Observer film reviewer Mark Kermode described the film as “not Nicole Kidman’s finest hour”.

Last year, he wrote: “Dahan will spend an inordinate amount of time shoving his lens right into poor Ms Kidman’s face, focusing on her bloodshot eyes, drooling over her oddly distinctive upper lip, daring someone to whisper out loud: ‘That’s not Grace Kelly – that’s the woman who peed on Zac Efron.‘”

Variety film critic Scott Foundas was similarly scathing of the movie.

“Amel’s script is agonisingly airless and contrived, especially when it tries to shoehorn in a conspiratorial subplot involving Rainier’s sister Princess Antoinette and a possibly duplicitous lady-in-waiting,” he wrote.

“As in La Vie en Rose, Dahan keeps things very busy on the visual front, even making sure to have literal fireworks erupting in the background of one marital argument, when one would have thought the emotional fireworks would have sufficed.

“‘At some point, every fairy tale must end,’ espouses the ever-wise Langella — only, in the case of Grace of Monaco, not nearly soon enough.”

Film review site Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates audience feedback, rates the film at 9 per cent after 53 reviews.