‘A Christmas Prince’ Is Every Bit As Tragic As You’ve Heard, & It Rules

You’ve probably heard about Netflix‘s travesty of cinema, A Christmas Prince. Maybe you’ve seen it and just need to properly digest the flaming hot garbage. Maybe you haven’t, and you’re here to see just what all the fuss is about. If that’s you, then we’re here to tell you that A Christmas Prince is just as bad and good as you’ve been hearing.

I’m Alex Bruce-Smith, associate news editor of PEDESTRIAN.TV, and with me is senior style editor Melissa Mason. After both watching A Christmas Prince over the weekend, we decided we just had to talk about it, because feelings? We got ’em.

WARNING: This post is full of spoilers. But really, can you spoil this film? Probably not.

ALEX: Okay, first impressions: A Christmas Prince makes absolutely no sense as either a romantic comedy OR as a Christmas movie, but somehow takes the worst things about those two genres and mashes them together into something insanely watchable.

MEL: Yes – how is this a Christmas movie. Besides the fact that Prince Richard‘s coronation is set for Christmas Eve. Like, he is not a Christmas Prince. He’s just a regular, boring prince. I was really hoping for some sort of ‘Prince of Finland and he’s the son of Santa’ situation.

ALEX: RIGHT? ‘Boring’ being the key word here. Can you give me the playboy prince who realises he needs to calm his tits after his latest jaunt splashed across the Daily Mail starts tanking his country’s economy? I’d watch the shit out of that.

MEL: Totally. He had zero arc, he was just this nice prince who hugged orphans and look (if he can’t be related to Santa) everyone loves a reformed bad boy and that’s what we were all there for.

Side note though – how good is a cliche meet-cute that involves one person slagging off the other before realising who they actually are. Taxi theft scene – fantastic. Like, cringe til’ I caved in on myself.

*drags cigarette* Prince Richard? Yeah, I knew him once…

But god I love it when the pleb insults the royalty/celebrity/famous person. So stupidly satisfying.

ALEX: Maybe I just wasn’t paying that close attention to the film but unless they’d LITERALLY brought up the taxi thing, I wouldn’t have realised he was the same dude. I was like ‘oh, what European beach club did you two meet at?’ Maybe it was the clumsiness of this entire film, but I thought that taxi bit was just there to establish her as the down-on-her-luck journalist.

Also: you’re telling me NONE OF THE OTHER JOURNALISTS who were literally waiting for the prince at the airport would fail to recognise him if he walked past with a three-week-old beard?

And can we talk for one second about her notes?

MEL: OMG YES PLEASE CAN WE. I mean let’s all acknowledge Im the style editor here and don’t exactly do investigative hard-hitting journalism, but even I would do a better job of this.

ALEX: Not one person I know writes notes like this. Not one. It’s like someone tried to explain note-taking to an alien, but accidentally got mixed up with the diary your ten-year-old self tried to keep in the hopes that it would make a great novel one day.

MEL: “I think I’m starting to get to know the real Prince… not what I thought!”

ALEX: Incredible stuff. Pulitzer-worthy.

MEL: Absolutely fantastic note-taking.

Here’s something I truly enjoyed for schmaltz reasons: When the bitchy ex chick noticed Amber‘s Converses at the tree decorating ceremony or whatever the fuck that was (what the fuck was that?). Sign of being “real” girl in all movies – wears sneakers to formal event.

ALEX: I just have this weird feeling we’re going to see that actress in a three-episode arch for a budget version of Gossip Girl in the next five years. She’ll play a bitch. It’s her calling.

MEL: She was an excellent bitch character, although I completely lost how she ended up married to the shit cousin? When did that happen. In fairness I was cooking for Friendmas, so I was only half-watching from the tree ceremony onward.

ALEX: Okay, I feel we have to talk about the prince’s younger sister Emily, because what the hell was that all about? You’ve put a character with a disability into the story to do nothing more than help the main characters come together. She starts out as a bitch, but once Amber treats her like a ‘real person’ for once (???) she becomes nice and sweet, and totally okay with setting her big brother up with an undercover journo. If this movie was a) ten-times better and b) made in 1998, I’d say it’d be making a heavy push for a Best Supporting Actress nom.

MEL: Did you notice how many times they just left Emily sitting in her wheelchair while they played silly buggers? The snowball scene – killed me. You’ve left your ACTUAL child sister, who I’m sure would love to play snowball-fight, sitting in the fucking freezing blizzard weather, in her wheelchair, immovable – while you cavort with her tutor in the snow. Right in front of her.

ALEX: Totally. Where’s child protective services in this godforsaken country?

But also that scene included one of my favourite moments: Amber and Richard falling on top of each other for no reason other than the script told them to.

It’s painfully obvious director Alex Zamm knew he had to get there but had no idea how to make it happen, so Ben Lamb (who plays Richard) just flung himself onto Rose McIver (Amber) at the signal.

MEL: Yes, like literally run and launch yourself onto her at 45 seconds in. Doesn’t matter where you are on set, GET THERE.

ALEX: And with all this conversation around sexual harassment at work, isn’t the correct response – after bodily falling onto your employee – to HASTILY MOVE ASIDE and say SORRY? Not lie there like some stunned idiot while your frozen dick squishes into her thigh.

MEL: Speaking of romantic moments – the wolf scene. Um, Beauty and the Beast much?

ALEX: Oh my god yeah! My housemate predicted that scene shot-for-shot, btw.

MEL: Here’s a thing though – I was muy shooketh by the reveal that the Prince was adopted.

ALEX: That was a twist I did not see coming.

MEL: It’s like they were smacking me across the head with it and I still missed it. And tbh should I have been so shook? We literally had the ‘LOOK HOW WELL THE PRINCE GETS ALONG WITH ORPHANS’ scene.

ALEX: I can’t with that bit. A heartwarming scene where the crown prince of Aldovia rouses up the local orphans for a fun game of capital punishment. You can tell me they were only throwing snowballs, and I’ll tell you: he still sentenced a snowman to die.

MEL: Ok so I went on Twitter (this is shocking for me, the only non-Twitter user at P.TV) and someone’s zoomed in on the magazine caption for the Prince’s tabloid spread.

Fantastically shit.

I mean this is absolutely why we are here for this movie, right? It’s just beautiful shit. Like my other favourite movie, Glitter.

Except I did actually do that slow-grin-warm-heart-curl-in-a-ball thing at the end when they got together, which happens to me at the end of every rom com. I’m so ashamed. I ENJOYED their reunion.

ALEX: Same, and I was weirdly so annoyed that it ended. Like I knew it was going to end on a pan out of them kissing in the snowy street, but I still wanted to see what happened next. How do you plan on being a journalist and a queen, Amber? Who did Emily get as a tutor? Was the vibe at the castle suuuuuuper awkward now? And did Amber’s blog – the one with “20,000 likes so far” – ever turn into anything? Or was it just one post: ‘How I Fucked Up An Assignment And Found Love Instead‘? (Totally stolen from How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, btw.)

I hate how invested I got in this garbage.

MEL: I was really intrigued as to how she was going to run an entire blog about Richard. AN ENTIRE BLOG just about Richard. That would somehow traffic so well, she would be set for life financially.

ALEX: Her blog was called Amber’s Blog, I just looked it up. She’s written precisely one article, ‘A King For Real‘, but has left herself space to discuss ‘World’, ‘Opinion’, ‘Culture’, ‘Lifestyle’ and ‘Travel’.

Calling it: Amber’s post-married life will see her become a lifestyle blogger.

MEL: Okay, hold up. We absolutely need to discuss how the King had popped a proclamation (!!!) inside that acorn ornament? WHAT? With a nifty little poem to lead people to it? That basically said, “I decree that adopted Princes can be Kings”, conveniently fixing the entire issue with Richard and the throne? Like that is just an outrageous plot element. I love a good hidden piece of legislation reveal as much as the next person, but come on – no King is popping important shit like that in a fucking acorn ornament for shits and gigs.

ALEX: I was also waiting for the third act reveal that, as well as adopted princes, maybe women could also rule???? If Richard couldn’t or wouldn’t take up the crown, then his younger sister Emily is also right there.

MEL: 10000%.

ALEX: Okay, final thoughts.

MEL: I think I loved A Christmas Prince BECAUSE it was trash. It’s just such enjoyable, predictable schmaltz. And for me that’s what a Christmas movie is about. I want to escape the hell that is Christmas shopping and end of year deadlines and just watch some girl who’s ~ just like me ~ fall in love with a fancy prince and also there’s Christmas music playing in the background.
They just delivered on all fronts and while I’m really enjoying picking this absolute pile of convoluted garbage apart NOW, when I was actually watching it I was enjoying every second.

ALEX: Honestly that’s half the fun. It’s trash, but it’s Good Trash™, in that you can happily yell at the television about every dumb piece of dialogue while still numbing your brain to the hellfire that is daily existence. Is it a travesty of cinema? Yes. Will I be watching again it while wrapping my last-minute Christmas presents? Also yes.

And finally, if no one else is brave enough to say it, I will: that homemade acorn was foul. Burn it.

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