The story does not appear to have good characterization. People were either 100 Percent good or 100 Percent bad. Real people with extreme rare exception have both good and bad traits. The simple characterizations made the movie too kid like. Also, the events were not really believable. The probability that the girl who the heroine helped when living in squalor, just so happened to be the woman to accidentally find the heroine before she almost died and who later happened to become the bishop of Paris who wrote the book to tell the story is just extremely low. Also the love story that the man who helped the heroine when she was a little girl in Germany later happened to come to Rome at the right time to help her when she was in her greatest danger and to be appointed as the chief of the Swiss Guard is as equally unbelievable.
The movie may have been true to the book as its only redeeming feature. For it to be a compelling and interesting historic movie, it would have had to be a lot more nuanced.
The movie may have been true to the book as its only redeeming feature. For it to be a compelling and interesting historic movie, it would have had to be a lot more nuanced.