Movie of the Week: The Christmas Prince - A Royal Wedding

Alexa:  I will freely admit that Netflix’s “A Christmas Prince” is objectively a bad movie, but it is perfect for those of us looking for some pure holiday cheese. It has just the right blend of Christmas magic, royal scandal, the picturesque scenery of fake European countries, and absurdly rushed romance. Naturally, I was hoping for more of the same with “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding,” but I was pretty disappointed! Naturally with a title that includes the words “Royal Wedding” I was expecting just that - some fabulous royal wedding planning with plenty of drama. But the wedding was almost the subplot of a movie about this England/Switzerland hybrid country’s financial collapse and the corruption that led to it. Naturally Amber, perhaps one of the world’s least experienced investigative journalists, uncovers the truth with her extensive note taking (i.e. writing the word “Fishy?” in her untouched reporter’s notebook) and Princess Emily’s random hacking skills. And poor Richard just spends the whole movie looking exhausted as his country falls apart. If I wanted to dedicate 90 minutes of my time to global finance issues I would read The Economist. But in this case, I wanted pretty dresses and gorgeous scenery and romance and fluff. Amber and Richard have maybe three scenes together, all of which are fraught with tension, so ultimately the royal wedding feels a little anticlimactic. But of course, everything works out for everyone in the end, even the obnoxious wedding planner who serves no real purpose other than to be irritating, as well as Amber’s dad, who is inexplicably recast in this movie and could not be more grating. Alas, I’m still holding out hope for a threequel (Royal Baby, perhaps?) that recaptures some of the first movie’s schmaltzy charm.

Joel: Sometimes, when a sequel is being created, careful thought goes into what the next natural step in the story will be. How the characters will grow and change, how the events of the first movie have changed the status quo and what is next in their journey. Then there are sequels that take the first movie and try and try and do exactly that but more. Spider-man fought one villain in the last movie so this time he’s fighting three. We won the singing competition against our rivals to win nationals, but now we have to win a worldwide competition. That kind of thing.

The Christmas Prince - A Royal Wedding is very much along the lines of the second option. If you enjoyed a couple falling in love in the first movie, now everybody has a romantic partner. The younger sister has a crush on a boy. The dad comes along for the ride this time and falls for the castle’s head chief. Both of Amber’s friends who spend 90% of the first movie as talking heads on her computer screen get extended time here and both get paired off. Even the queen is paired off as well as the castle staff. By the end of the movie, there are no single people left in the country of Aldovia. Also if you liked the espionage thriller aspect of the first movie (Amber doing her best investigative journalism) then we’ve upped that factor as well. Now the whole country’s economy is in danger and to solve this mystery, they need to use the princess’ previously unmentioned skills in computer hacking.

Unfortunately, a good bit of the charm from the first movie doesn’t come along for the second movie. It’s not always easy to explain why a movie like The Christmas Prince works. So there isn’t an easy explanation as to why this movie doesn’t manage to work the way the first one does. There are probably a hundred or more of these Hallmark/Lifetime original movie type of christmas movies that come out every year and some are way more enjoyable than others without really being any better than others. Netflix obviously has no idea why Christmas Prince was such a hit over their other Christmas romances, and they’re trying to replicate the formula. It wasn’t a total failure, as I did enjoy the movie but Netflix has doubled down on their output of this type of movie and they have some that get closer to capturing the charm of the original Christmas Prince than the sequel does.

Chris: There’s plenty of reasons this movie fails and yes, a lot of them are why the first one was so funny to sit through. However, there was one main factor that made this movie way less enjoyable: recasting Amber’s dad. And it’s not like he was recast with an actor that looks similar to the first but then again, the Christmas Prince series isn’t exactly too concerned with continuity. The worst part about it is the replacement dad, John Guerrasio, had a bigger role in this movie compare to the previous and chose to play the character like a New York cartoon. Also it seemed as if the movie was only about the wedding for the first act and it set up as if Amber was going to have to butt heads with the wedding planner the entire movie but that was completely thrown out once the real conflict of the movie got going.

Jason: Full disclosure, I did not watch this movie. I don’t think I’ve recovered from watching the first one LAST year! However, my lovely wife, Emily, bit the bullet and watched it for me. Here is her review for it.

Emily: Last year I enjoyed the feel good holiday magic of A Christmas Prince. So this year, I was looking forward to the sequel subtitled The Royal Wedding. I wish this movie had gotten there for me, but it fell so super flat. The magic was missing, the romance was absent and the movie itself felt disjointed and inconsistent. It was just missing the feel good element. To be completely honest, it was such a disappointment that it actually struggled to hold my attention. I'll stick with the sugary goodness of the fist movie.