Last year, Netflix’s A Christmas Prince was a surprise smash hit of the Christmas season (you can read my write-up of it here – heavy spoilers). And Netflix wasted no time capitalizing on its popularity by coming out with a sequel just a year later. And that allowed us to be graced by the presence of A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding. It’s not quite as good as its predecessor. And here, “good” of course means “enjoyably terrible.” But it’s still solidly on the “so bad it’s good” scale and makes for a fun hour and a half.
Rather than do a typical review, I’m just going to go over some of the more fun and/or ridiculous parts of the movie. Peep the trailer below and spoilers will follow.
I just want to quickly reaffirm that this rating is an objective, pure quality of film rating. It’s objectively bad, but man did I enjoy every second of it.
Let’s get some of the basics of the plot out of the way first. The movie picks up nearly a year after the conclusion of the first movie, which, as I’m sure you’ll remember, ended with Amber accepting King Richard’s marriage proposal. The main(ish) storyline revolves around the planning of their wedding. But it’s not all happiness and bliss. Amber is finding Aldovia’s long-standing “protocols” (something that is said no less than 100 times) to be cramping her style. She is being over-ruled on everything, and not just for the wedding. She is being told what not to do, not to say, where not to go. Basically she’s being told everything she’s doing is wrong.
And to make matters worse, the beginning of Richard’s kingship (Is that the right word? Ah, whatever, who cares). His first big initiative is one of modernization, to bring Aldovia into the 21st century. Unfortunately, it’s not quite going as planned. While the ideas should be bringing prosperity to the country, the country is bleeding money. So now Amber not only has to get her wedding under control, but she also has to help solve a national crisis! That is, if her soon-to-be husband will allow her to help. That’s another “big” plot point. To the extent that Amber has to put her investigative journalism skills to good use. Skills she has honed in her hugely successful career as a…blogger? Of her daily life?
(Apologies on most/all of the pictures included here. I guess Netflix doesn’t let you take screenshots when watching on a computer? Or you can but it’s just a blank, black picture? So I had to take pictures on my phone of my computer screen and then used those. But it seems kind of fitting that lower quality pictures are going into a post on this particular movie.)
What a title, Amber. SEO expert, you are not. Also, the name of her blog got slightly cut off. But it’s “Amber’s Blog.” Not super creative, this one.
Travel Decisions
Amber’s voiceover talks about all the back and forth traveling between New York and Aldovia. We get a few glimpses of some planes, including one where we can see the airline name…
Yeah, 0% chance either of them were flying United during their travels.
What is with these terrible names for magazines?
DCI News. Entertainment Social. Cover. Yes, that one with King Richard appears to be called simply “Cover.”
And then there’s this one. Is it..is it called…Rashed? What??
I guess newspapers are no better
Couple things here. First, that headline about Richard’s Modernization Initiative just screams “Old man yelling at cloud.”
Then look at the other side. It’s literally a thumbprint over some guy’s face in an article about cryptocurrency.
A wedding on Christmas Day? GTFOH
Amber and Richard are getting married on Christmas Day. Is it fair to call Amber and Richard jackasses for this decision? Because I’m going to call them both jackasses for this decision.
Still nobody knows what the magazine Amber used to work for was called
In a Skype/FaceTime type call with her two friends, we learn their old magazine no longer exists.
I actually love this being included. Remember from the first A Christmas Prince? Their magazine whose name was never spoken so we could never know definitively what it was called because it had such a terrible logo? The movie is leaning into its awfulness and I’m here for it.
The country is going broke, leaving no money for proper protest signs
I already mentioned how King Richard’s reign isn’t off to a great start. Well a speech of his is crashed (but not until the very end for some reason) by protesters. Look at some of those signs, which look like they were made on Google Docs.
“This is Aldovia” – um, duh?
“Why?” – Why, indeed, my friend. Wait, why what, though?
Simon
You remember Simon? I’m being silly of course you do. Simon comes back. He hopes to regain his seat at the table, along with forgiveness of King Richard, his cousin. Richard does not forgive him, he does not let him back in in any meaningful way. Unless you mean literally letting him into the palace. Because he does that. Because it’s Christmas and Simon is family.
Simon seems like he wants to help. But since he was the villain of the last movie, you can’t be sure. It doesn’t help any that his one idea is investing in a new cryptocurrency he’s been researching. But wait, that newspaper we saw at the airport had an article about cryptocurrency! Surely that is going to be a major plot point moving forward. Except that it’s not. Unless I’m mistaken, crypto is never mentioned a single other time after Richard shuts Simon down. In the end it turns out though that Simon is good now. So there’s that. That’s worth…something.
Lord Leopold
This is a new character. He was a trusted friend and advisor of Richard’s father, King Something-or-Other. Leopold agreeing to come back to advise Richard is hailed (in the palace at least) as a sort of cure-all for the country’s financial woes. Which means he’s for sure the bad guy. And he is. But more on that later.
Amber’s blog is taken down
Apparently writing about the private lives of the royal family is frowned upon? Who knew. Though I find it a little hard to believe that it was so easy for this to happen. Mrs. Stops the Fun (I couldn’t for the life of me begin to tell you what her actual name is, so this will have to do) is of the opinion that Amber’s blog goes against Aldovia’s precious “protocol.” So she contacted…someone to have Amber’s blog taken down, without telling Amber.
Worst bachelorette party ever
Amber’s friends Andy and Melissa arrive and all they want to do is take Amber out for her bachelorette party. Except Amber has other ideas. She wants to investigate Aldovia’s financial problems instead.
Amber, do better than this
This is your disguise for walking around in public? Sunglasses? I want to say you’re better than this, but I’m beginning to think that’s just not true. But I guess it doesn’t matter because she takes the sunglasses off almost immediately.
Worst bachelorette party ever, continued
After their recon mission, they leave Princess Emily to hack into (public) records to find the source of the financial fraud. And because these four (Simon weaseled his way into the group by this point) adults are completely okay with leaving this young girl alone to do this, Amber, Andy, and Melissa finally get to have the much-hyped bachelorette party…which literally lasts for 20 seconds on screen, culminating in this electric scene.
Worst hacking scene ever
Princess Emily is struggling to hack into the database, and can’t figure out the password. She is understandably quite frustrated about this, so she bangs the keyboard, like so.
And wouldn’t you know it but that random key smashing gives her the correct password! I don’t know about you but that might be the most A Christmas Prince that a movie has ever A Christmas Princed. It’s just perfect.
Talk about burying the lede
During all of this excitement Amber had gone missing. And because everyone in this palace is an idiot (except for Princess Emily, of course) it took forever to find her. Why call Amber’s phone when you can just yell her name as you run throughout the castle, amiright? Anywho, Richard finds her, they make up, yada yada yada, they return to the castle to break some news.
They start off by outing Lord Leopold as the culprit behind the fraud with the country’s finances announcing they are taking back their wedding. It’s their wedding after all and they want it to feel like it.
This happens
In case you’re not sure what you’re seeing, yes that indeed is Amber holding Lord Leopold at arrowpoint. That’s all. Just had to include this. Because it’s insane.
Richard makes a rather rash decision (or two)
Now that they have discovered the source of the financial problems, Richard can set about correcting them. He starts by announcing every worker who was shorted on pay will be paid in full (sounds fair) along with a “Christmas bonus for every hard-working man and woman in Aldovia.” EVERY? Can he do that? Even if he can, should he?
Also, Rudy is now the Earl of Aldovia? I don’t know what an Earl does. But I can’t imagine Rudy is even remotely qualified to do whatever it is an Earl does. Maybe Aldovia isn’t in the best of hands here.
The wedding
What a letdown this was. Ain’t nothing royal about this wedding – I mean, aside from the fact that it was literally a royal wedding, of course.
Are you kidding me? It’s so small! All of my friends who have gotten married have had at least twice that many people in attendance.
Teasing a third entry
At the end we get this exchange between Richard and Amber.
Richard: “Thank you for making this the best Christmas ever.”
Amber: “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to top this one.”
Richard: “Well you never know. There’s always next year.”
Amber: “I’m willing to try if you are.”
Yep, I’m in.
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