Our Christmas season wouldn’t be complete without Netflix giving us the concluding film in the ‘riveting’ A Christmas Prince franchise. It all began in 2017, when A Christmas Prince gained so much popularity due to its cheesiness and predictability. The film also coincidentally shares parallels with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s real life romance. Meghan and Amber (Rose McIver) are American, they both fell in love with a royal, and they each have a blog. While Meghan had to give up her blog due to her entry into royal life, Amber gets to keep hers because fantasy royal land allows main characters carte blanche to do whatever they want.
A Christmas Prince was so successful that Netflix figured it would do it again, and again. Usually, I am the first person in line for a strong helping of Christmas cheese in my movies, but this latest offering doesn’t pack any romantic punches, nor is it very entertaining. The cast are pretty much sleepwalking through the movie, and the lackluster script makes it even more obvious that no one is trying.
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby wants to be so many things, and does none of it successfully. The signing of the treaty with the Penglians is the main plotline, which is unnecessarily muddled with a stolen treaty, plenty of red herrings as well as a supernatural subplot. Did this film really require a whodunit element? Well, the first two movies had this element (the first one does it better), so the formula must be strongly adhered to. As cringeworthy as the other movies were, at least the mystery had a bigger payoff when solved.
King Richard (Ben Lamb) and Queen Amber rule Aldovia equally, both heavily involved in the management of the country. While I like this shared display of duty, and the movement away from patriarchal spaces, it feels contrived to fit a feminist narrative. This is emphasized through Amber’s arduous efforts to convince Queen Ming (Momo Yeung) of the Penglians that the Queens deserve just as much credit as the Kings. She wants to make history, yet buys into the mumbo jumbo about some first born curse. Is the movie trying to chart contemporary spaces, where women make bold strides professionally, but still hold tight to traditional maternal roles? Hmm, I think I may be according it too much credit.
The whole point of having a film revolving around royals is to give us a glimpse of something beyond the flawless personas they portray to us as public figures. The first two movies had this in large doses. Richard struggled with his ascension to Kinghood in A Christmas Prince, and in the second movie, Richard and Amber hit some rough patches in their relationship. There is none of that in this movie. Richard and Amber are perfectly in sync, professionally and personally. All he faces difficulty with is building a crib, and Amber delivers a baby looking flawless and still has a full face of makeup at the end of it.
There is nothing real about this film, not in the relationships, and there is certainly no realism to be found in the CGI setting – it looks pretty though. If you are a fan of the original movie, I would say stick to that if you need a dose of Christmas romance, because this film is not worth the time spent watching it. I am Marley’s ghost, and you have been warned.
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