Great American Family may seen to be breaking the mold with a supposedly European male lead in A Royal Christmas Holiday, but don’t worry, they’re still committed to good ol’ American values. This new romance movie features Brittany Underwood as an American reporter and Jonathan Stoddard as a foreign royal who end up falling for one another despite coming from two very different worlds. Can our plucky female lead’s American ways show her prince the true meaning of Christmas and love? Keep reading to find out.
The Gist: Katie Viana (Brittany Underwood) does community service updates for local news station WYED TV but wants to be regular on-air journalistic talent with her own segment like like the station’s current on-camera star and off-camera diva Carol Jordan (Meredith Thomas). Katie asks her boss, program director Jerrod (William Baldwin), to assign her something more meaningful, and while he initially tells her to just hunker down and work her way up, he ends up assigning her a big new exclusive up for grabs thanks to Carol’s upcoming holiday vacation.
The local military museum is opening a new exhibit dedicated to World War II veterans and one of the sponsors is the European Kingdom of Visaria, which is sending Prince Jonathan Wentworth (Jonathan Stoddard) as their representative. Jerrod promises Katie that if she can land an interview with the notoriously camera-shy prince, then she’ll get her own special news segment. Prepared to dig deep to achieve her career goal, Katie dedicates herself to getting the scoop from Jonathan on his visit to the museum and newly released book about his World War II veteran grandfather, but in the process ends up getting closer to her subject than she ever could have imagined. Will these two star-crossed lovers find something lasting during the holiday season, or will their differences be their ultimate undoing?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A Royal Christmas Holiday may remind you of recently released Hallmark and GAF holiday titles A Not So Royal Christmas and A Royal Date for Christmas, as well as 2019 Netflix Original romantic-comedy A Christmas Prince.
Performance Worth Watching: I guess Louie Chapman as Jonathan’s aide, Louis, because he had to say lines like, “‘Tis a tangled web that won’t be easily untangled” and “What’s done is done. It’s water under the bridge, it’s six feet under, it’s kicking up the daisies,” with a straight face.
Memorable Dialogue: “I was deprived so many things growing up. No sports teams. I didn’t even have a bicycle in fear that I might get hurt.” Wow, Jonathan, thank you for opening up about your heart-wrenching childhood. Being a prince sounds very hard.
Honorable mention for “You’re a prince and she’s a television presenter. How could you have possibly made that work?”
A Holiday Tradition: It seems like it’s a tradition for a store in Katie’s hometown to hire someone to play Santa Claus for the local kids. And when this year’s Santa’s car breaks down on the way over, Prince Jonathan volunteers himself to keep the celebration alive by playing a Santa, himself, and he gets weirdly into it.
Does the Title Make Any Sense?: There’s a character who’s a royal and the action takes place over the holiday season so, sure, in a vague sort of way, it makes sense.
Our Take: Essentially, nothing really happens in A Royal Christmas Holiday. On the surface it kind of seems like it does, but look a little closer and you realize there wasn’t really any significant conflict or climax to raise the stakes or get viewers invested. Katie wants to get her own news special and… she does. Epic.
The only “conflicts” that happen along the way don’t actually happen. Like how Prince Jonathan revealing that a ghost writer wrote his book for him never even airs in Katie’s final story (which is kind of a shame, because instead of doing the mature thing and being vulnerable with the world, he’s just going to live a lie). Or how Katie overhears Jonathan loudly talking to Louis about his fiancée only for him to reveal he doesn’t actually have a fiancée and it’s just some story his mum cooked up for the press. What was the point of any of it if, then? Even Katie’s poor dad breaks his leg falling off a roof as a mere plot device to drive Jonathan and Katie closer together. It all just made the whole thing ring emotionally hollow.
The performances themselves also definitely leave something to be desired. While Brittany Underwood is decent as Katie, her work is undermined by Jonathan Stoddard’s unconvincing accent work, overactive eyebrows, and sometimes uncomfortable attempts at smolder. His performance kept reminding me of a strange cross of Joey Tribbiani from Friends and Homelander from The Boys, and I found it all a bit distracting (especially the eyebrows). To be fair to Stoddard, though, he was tasked with evoking a Great Britain knock-off country that not only doesn’t exist but also is a place and culture we learn almost nothing about beyond it having a monarchy and apparently not allowing royal kids to ride bikes, which definitely doesn’t add much information or backstory for a person’s character.
I know I’ve been pouring on the Jonathan critiques but Katie is also kind of an oddball in her own right. She’s able to creepily figure out the exact suite Jonathan is staying at so she can get close to him for her story in addition to waiting out his initial entrance at the airport so she can get an in with him (which is laughably easy since the prince is apparently a sucker for a pretty face. If he’s royalty, why doesn’t he have a security team?!). With all of that in mind, you’d think they’d make a great couple, but unfortunately there’s very little chemistry between them. Even so, they somehow manage to fall in love in the span of like three days despite being from totally different worlds. I really don’t see this working out longterm, but I guess I wish them luck anyway?
Our Call: SKIP IT. A Royal Christmas Holiday‘s unfortunately lacks enough originality, stakes, or charm to make it stand out from the many other “royal” holiday titles currently out there available for streaming.
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