The Advent Calendar of Great Holiday Movies: Day 18 "A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding"
The pre-Christmas Day season of Advent is upon us. Here at SeedSing we love the chocolaty goodness of getting a piece of candy once a day until we get to open our presents. As our gift to you we will present a great movie associated with the holiday season. Many will be awesome, some will be extra awesome. Enjoy.
Day 18: “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding”
Opened Doors: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15, Day 16, Day 17
Last week for the Advent Calendar I wrote about the Netflix original “A Christmas Prince”. I teased that I would talk about the sequel soon, and that’s what I’m going to do today. After the “success” of the first movie a sequel was deemed “necessary” I suppose. I thought they wrapped everything up pretty well in the first movie, but, spoiler alert, it ended with a proposal. I guess Netflix decided they needed to continue this story. That is about the only good thing I can say about “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding”.
My biggest beef with the sequel is, they had fun goofing off in the first one and expected nothing. In this one, they tried too hard to make a bad movie. It was too aware of how ridiculous and goofy the first one was. They tried to make it just as silly, if not more so, than the first one. That’s a problem. That would be like Tommy Wiseau trying to make a sequel to “The Room” right now. He knows how bad it is, but he’s capitalizing in a different way. He’s doing his thing, and it works for him. With “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding”, they just made a bad holiday movie.
This one wasn’t nearly as fun. The chemistry between the 2 leads, they didn’t have much to begin with, was dead on arrival. The Queen, who asked to be invited to their next sledding expedition, got her wish, but it felt hollow. That whole sledding scene was unnecessary. The bad guy was down and out, looking “haggard”, but he turns out to be a good guy. He helps the leads this time around. The sister all of the sudden became tiresome and a genius computer hacker. The friends were pretty useless, even though they had much bigger roles. The people who work in the castle were just as single minded and boring as in the first. They didn’t need to be in this movie. The wedding planner, a new character, was a caricature of every single over the top party planner. He was insufferable. The main guy was barely in this movie. I hardly remember any scene he was in. I could easily say the same for the female lead. She drifted in and out without any real notice.
The most egregious thing, they recast the female lead’s dad, and gave him a much, much bigger role. He was the comic relief, and this actor took a big swing. He whiffed, and he whiffed big time. He was over the top, told corny jokes and was just too much. I found myself get angry when he showed up on screen, and I even started to dislike the character. In the first movie the dad was barely a side character. But the sequel decided he needed to be a main player. That was a mistake.
“A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding” was a sequel not needed. Most sequels aren’t needed. But, as I said, I think Netflix wanted to jump on the bandwagon and keep this story going. I just wish this one didn’t take itself serious. More so, I wish they just goofed off more and had more fun. I also think, due to the fact that a ton of people watched this, they’re going to make more. Don’t. They should have stopped at one. If you’re a person like me, and you need to watch everything in a movie universe, I guess you should watch this movie, but you won’t enjoy it. I know I didn’t. I’d much rather just watch “A Christmas Prince” instead.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.
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