Netflix is at it again.
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding has officially debuted, and boy was it a movie that we watched. After a year of what felt like a surplus of actual royal weddings, a holiday-themed Netflix version starring Rose McIver was sure to be exactly what we needed to put a cap on 2018.
We had some fun for a couple hours, but wow does running a kingdom make a man boring. Anything we dug about King Richard (Robert? Redmond? Richmond?) in the first movie was all wrapped up in finances, crises, and black turtlenecks. We did have Amber’s friends and father around for a change, but like dang there was so much business and protocol to deal with in this festive holiday romp. It was a little bit of a downer, to be honest.
The movie followed Amber and King Rufus in the lead-up to their wedding. Amber, as the future Queen of Aldovia, can’t escape the press, who are determined to find out how she feels about her future husband’s stupid modernization initiatives that everybody hates. Amber’s also having trouble escaping the stuffy castle staff, who can’t quit with their royal protocols about jewelry and dresses and blogging. They really, really hate blogging.
All of it threatens to break Amber and King Ralphie up for good, but as the Queen-to-be says, “somehow through all this insanity, I’m still me.” And that’s true, as Amber is always as Amber as she could be, bucking those dumb royal protocols and breaking out her questionable journalism skills at any and all opportunities.
Now that we’ve finished the movie (twice so far), we’ve got to talk about a few important bits and plots that stuck out the most and made us go, “Huh?”
The Blogging
Listen, we’ve never wished for anything as much as we’ve wished for Meghan Markle to have kept up her lifestyle blog, The Tig throughout her courtship and marriage to Prince Harry, but who actually blogs anymore? Amber claims she now makes a living as a blogger, but all she’s blogging about is her life as queen-to-be. That’s actually a weird way to make a living and we kinda understand why the palace was like “please don’t.” How are you making money from a blog anyway? Get yourself an Instagram, girl!
The Drama
The best part of this movie made no sense, but it was when Amber went missing after getting in trouble for breaking royal protocol and going to a bar to investigate finances. She had to shut down her blog! No one, not even the king, knew of any place where Amber might be, until suddenly he did, and there was only one place she could possibly be. The King took a very dramatic ride on a horse through the snow to some intense music and we just really enjoyed it. You go get your princess detective, King Rupert.
We also must give a shoutout to that moment when everyone was expecting Lord Leopold and instead, Simon arrived. Simon! Yes, the Simon who tried to steal King Rugby’s crown. Everybody’s shocked face got a zooming close-up and we rewatched it multiple times just because it was the most dramatic thing we’ve ever seen.
The Business
The first movie was romantic! There was archery and kissing and secret identities! This movie talked so dang much about businesses and shell companies and consortiums that our eyes glazed over. An evil dude (Lord Leopold!) was siphoning money, causing initiatives to fail and Aldovians to lose all their money. One of the businesses was called Glockenspiel and once, Amber wrote “Meadlowlark” on a notepad, and that was really all we took away from it. But at least Amber nearly took Leopold out with a bow and arrow, and then he was led to the dungeon, so that was cool. Speaking of which…
There’s a dungeon!
The castle at Aldovia has a dungeon in the deepest, darkest depths of the castle, says King Rockbar’s mother. We didn’t get to see it, but we better get to see it if Amber and King Rugbert’s cheeky joke about trying again next year turns out to be true.
That Random Play
A short subplot involved Princess Emily being in a play chronicling the classic Aldovian story of how Santa got his powers, but then the theatre workers went on strike during the play due to the King’s initiatives, so Amber put on the play in the castle. Emily flirted with her costar. And that’s it. End of play plot.
The Hacking
Princess Emily didn’t just star in a play. She revealed that she’s really good at hacking and can totally hack into mysterious businesses. In the end though, the password to the business was found when she banged her fists on the keyboard in frustration. Naturally.
The Wedding
For a movie whose subtitle is “The Royal Wedding,” we were expecting something a little more grand. Good on Amber for convincing everyone the royal protocols were stupid, but boo on Amber for ending up with a wedding that was just kinda normal. Wedding “designer” Sahil was not good at his job and had planned an insane, way over-the-top event, but there had to be a happy medium in there somewhere. Netflix has got money, people, and it could have been used to help this movie live up to its title and its royal predecessors earlier this year.
Anyway, we’re happy to report that we watched this movie once before this article and then again as we were writing the article, and it was actually better the second time, so by the time we’ve watched this another 32 times before Christmas, it’ll probably be the best movie we’ve ever seen. So congrats to the happy couple and to us for cancelling all of our plans for December in honor of these long-awaited nuptials. Happy holidays to all.
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding is now streaming on Netflix.