The holiday season is called the most wonderful time of the year for a reason. It’s the time of gathering, gift-giving, hot chocolate, sugar cookies and, most importantly, cheesy movies about love and family.
For the longest time, the Hallmark Channel was the go-to place for cliché Christmas movies about family and unexpected love, but Netflix has quickly established itself as a major contender in the competition of which platform has the “best” cheesy Christmas movies.
They secured this spot after releasing the movie “A Christmas Prince” in November 2017, which quickly gained popularity and a following by many Netflix subscribers.
“A Christmas Prince” follows journalist Amber Moore as she visits fictional Aldovia to report on its prince, who may or may not be abdicating the throne after his father’s death.
She goes undercover as a tutor for the princess, and thus her relationship with the royal family, specifically Prince Richard, begins. Eventually they fall in love and Prince Richard proposes to her after spending a week together, in typical cheesy movie fashion.
The reasons behind this movie’s wild popularity after its release may seem confusing, but “A Christmas Prince” gives cliché movie lovers a storyline that isn’t totally predictable, something that Hallmark has yet to figure out.
Naturally, fans of the movie were quick to hound Netflix for a sequel. On Friday, Nov. 30, fans were granted their wish and “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding” was released.
The sequel follows much more than a glamorous wedding between an American and a prince, like the one we saw earlier this year. It follows Richard and Amber trying to balance his demanding schedule, wedding preparations and an economic crisis in Aldovia.
The movie, by Hallmark standards, is a success – it shows us enough cute moments between the couple to make us root for them, but gives us enough conflict that we don’t get bored.
However, this isn’t Hallmark, so Netflix subscribers expect better. The movie is not terrible, but as a sequel it pales in comparison to the first. Most of the movie shows Amber being completely passive and the plot is so scattered that it is hard to tell the movie’s purpose.
Despite being titled “The Royal Wedding,” the movie only briefly covered the actual wedding and instead focused on the planning. Amber, along with her two friends and the villain from the first movie, Simon, try to uncover why there is an economic crisis happening without any explanation.
Simon, who people love to hate, redeemed himself in the sequel. It seemed like he is trying to conduct some shady business at first, but then it is revealed that he was just trying to save the country.
Other than seeing Simon turn from villain to semi-decent guy, the movie leaves little for fans to rave about. While “A Christmas Prince” was a perfect balance between cringeworthy cuteness and interesting plot, the sequel is filled with lackluster acting and dialogue, stereotyping and too much conflict.
It became distracting for fans who were hoping to catch more than a glimpse of the actual royal wedding. It’s hard to expect much from a movie that is inherently bad, but for now, it is probably better to forget this movie exists and live in ignorant bliss pretending that Amber and Prince Richard’s story ended at their engagement and they lived happily ever after.
