CHRISTMAS CAPSULES: A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018)

Sometimes—okay, maybe most of the time—it's really shocking to me the things that “take off”. Take, for instance, Netflix's original holiday romance A Christmas Prince, released last year, which somehow blew up and went viral, despite not even being a slightly-enjoyable example of what makes these cheesy movies appealing.

Well given the attention paid to the first one, it was all but guaranteed there would be a sequel. That sequel is called A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding, and it takes everything that was bad with the first, makes them even worse, and then adds a bunch of other bad things to the list. It's one that, dare I say it, even the more hardcore romantic cheeseballs will have a very hard time slogging through.

It's almost a year after the events of the first one, and Amber is finally about to get married to Prince Richard of Aldovia. She is summoned from her New York home, and whisked away to the fictional country to do just that. But she isn't going alone—she's brought her edgy, inner-city pops (who thinks he's a “chef” because he owns a diner in New York City) along. He's one of those no-nonsense type tough guys who thinks it's appropriate to give high fives to dignitaries and bear hug a queen...no way that appalling behavior could eventually endear himself to the royal family!

God, I'm just not going to get into it. If your idea of romance is watching a man constantly get pulled away from his woman to answer work-related calls, this is the movie for you...seriously, Amber spends so much of the movie without her man, that you just expect her to call things off. This is bad, but not in an enjoyable way; it seems to take pride in crossing the line from “frivolously stupid, lighthearted fun” to “rage-inducing idiocy”, and then just staying there as long as it can.

Just a few thoughts I have: Amber really thinks she'll be able to keep blogging as a queen to a kingdom? What exactly does she think being a QUEEN will entail? Why even center a romantic movie around this plot, when the entire first half consists of Richard getting pulled away to deal with business? Why is the dad such a moron? Why does he keep touting his diner credentials, as if those would up his status among royalty? When did the crippled girl learn to hack into computer systems? Why did they have to bring a “feminist” angle to all of this? Of course, for the sake of the movie, she ends up getting her way and completely undoing centuries of time-honored traditions, but common sense would tell you not to marry into a royal family if being yourself is your main motivation in life. How did no one have time to look into a money-laundering scheme so grand, it literally depleted all of Aldovia's money? Jesus...I'm done here.

RATING: 1/10

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CHRISTMAS CAPSULES: The Christmas Calendar (2017)

Not to be confused with the similarly-titled Netflix original The Holiday Calendar, this MarVista-produced (oh God) holiday garbage is about Emily, a woman who runs a bakery in a small town (of course it’s a small town). Gerrard is the Frenchman who runs a rival bakery in a supermarket across the street. But, despite making it painfully obvious from the beginning, Emily is too stupid to realize that the man is interested in her, and what should be a quick ten-second movie is instead drawn out to feature length. Lucky us. Oh, and the movie gets its title from a random calendar that shows up in the woman’s bakery one day; the whole town has nothing better to do than to get caught up in the mystery of who the secret admirer is that sent it.

I don’t know if my definition of a “good” Hallmark-style Christmas movie is that different from everyone else’s, but this one hit every single note of annoyance for me: There are the old gossiping grandmas who clearly get a load of excitement from figuring out the mystery man; the villain attempting to take down the main star in the form of the manager of the supermarket across the street; the fact that the holiday calendar provides such scintillating mystery that the hashtag GOES VIRAL nationwide; the small-town setting; the clear and unbridled stupidity of the main girl, who believes the male baker is out to steal her business, misses all of his blatant cues of interest in her, and then suddenly, of course, falls in love with him on the writer's cue. It's like a hall-of-fame of tropes, all gathered right here for the non-discerning holiday romance lover.

Really, the only impressive thing in all of this is Zeb’s outstanding French accent, which isn’t one of those “mostly English but slightly foreign” accents, but a full-on, hard-to-understand-sometimes, put-closed-captioning-on-so-you-don't-miss-a-line heavy one that shows a dedication to this that no one else in the production had. I also liked the character of Ivy, although I still can’t tell if her hilariously deadpan delivery was intentional, or just a result of poor acting; either way, her awkwardness is a rare bright spot in a movie that’s so full of schlocky emotional drivel that it becomes almost physically painful. This is all just by-the-numbers whimsy, but not the good kind: a movie so impossibly full of holiday charm that it works in reverse, sapping all the holiday excitement from the viewer, and leaving behind a lobotomized mass of emptiness. Don’t be surprised if you walk away from the viewing unable to feel happy ever again.

RATING: 2/10

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