A Royal Winter (2017)

Yeah, whole thing's about this awkward.

    Day two so might as well dive into the royalty subsection of Hallmark movies. I’ve surfed past enough parts of these movies to know that this is almost a genre unto itself. Let’s see how vague European royalty impresses.

    Second movie to open with aerial shots of New York City, this time Central Park and other recognizable landmarks covered in snow. I think I’m already getting the idea that New York equals driven career woman, we’ll see how that pans out. Oh, in the very first scene apparently it also means volunteer reader of fairy tales to children, all right, I’m on board so far. And now she’s applying for a job at a law firm and the people interviewing her express astonishment that she had the time to read to children and study law. Ok, get it now, young aspiring lawyer has to make a forced choice between the law she’s been studying and her true passion as a teacher. I’m assuming somehow the royal she falls for either has kids of his own or, I dunno, has an orphanage on the side? That part might need some finessing.

    And now the woman interviewing her gives essentially a villain’s speech about how if she wants this job it will be her entire life and she won’t have time for any frippery such as helping children. Woof, there’s efficient and then there’s blatant, what else did this writer do? Holy shit, two of The Cube movies and the direct to video sequel to ‘Stir of Echoes?’ I bet with far fewer rewrites than you would think this script could be turned into a horror flick.

    The next scene is at a coffee shop and she bursts out to a friend in 30 seconds exactly why she doesn’t want to work at a law firm and the reasons are completely understandable and well thought out and will now take around 75 minutes to be proven right by falling in love with a prince. I already miss Danica. Her friend responds to her outburst by saying she should go to Europe with her. I don’t understand the economics of these people.

    They’re apparently going to Calpurnia, described as ‘Southwest of the French Alps.’ Ah, so Monaco with another name. I suspect that’s going to become a pattern. And her parents are apparently paying, which sounds about right. She bounces between assertive and defeatist very quickly and with no emotional transitions. I hope the royal is at least interesting.

    I’m trying not to include many screenshots of these since they’ve been made fairly recently and to decent standards but no: this is not believable in the least, thanks for trying movie.

You go back to matte painting school and learn to do it right.

    Now we have our prince, he’s getting ready for a coronation with apparently the queen still alive which, all right, I’m sure that’ll be gone into, and he’s practicing some sleight of hand. He seems ... fine. The queen is unpleasant and loads him with a chaperon until the coronation, played by a much more charming actor who, if this movie was interesting at all, would be the eventual actual love interest, but I have few hopes.

    Their meet-cute is him running over her hat on a motorcycle, driving back around and snatching it from her, buying her a replacement and giving it to her after he stalks her, then stealing her watch? Then he asks her to dinner when she’s very not interested? See, easy horror rewrite.

    We then cut to some royal stuff (trade deals are mentioned a couple of times, I’m guessing an arranged marriage for money is the fake crisis in the last third [spoilers: no]), he stresses he’s not his dad, he’s not interested in these old customs, unless he abdicates at the end I don’t care (spoilers: no). I suppose there’s more set up to get a commoner together with royalty than fixing up an old inn but I don’t really like either of these people and I’m starting to tune out of scenes. Plus the dialogue sucks and everything is so on the nose. They go on a kinda date and he keeps pretending like he’s not a prince and getting the citizens to play along and eventually she’s going to get upset and accuse him of lying to her and she won’t be wrong. Also where’s that chaperon guy? He’s just straight up defying the queen.

    Supposed romance ensues. Then she finds out he’s the prince, like she was bound to do, and believes all the tabloid stories about him instantly, so now I actively dislike both of them. I think I’m going to ruminate on how stupid the name Calpurnia is for the next several scenes.

    Plot points: the prince runs a foundation for needy kids (close enough to an orphanage, I suppose), she forgives the deception, she goes to dinner at the palace, it doesn’t go great, they go for a walk and he expresses doubts about being king, they smooch and get snapped by the paparazzi and now it’s a whole thing. Then the law firm offers her the job and it turns out the queen arranged for it to get her out of the country and I continue to not care about these two.

    Ok, we’ve reached a plot point now where I’m actually angry at this movie. Throughout the story the royal has kept his kid’s foundation a secret explicitly for their sake, she suggested telling the papers to improve his image and he instantly and emphatically rejected it, stating he’s keeping it secret from even his mother. After a single job offer they’ve both given up and gone all mopey while each still telling the other to ‘be yourself’ despite refusing it themselves and after one last call between them that ends in emotional passive aggressiveness instead of either of them just growing a spine and declaring an intention she arranges for the queen to find out about the kid’s foundation? No, movie, no. This is a lead who whipsaws back and forth between emotions and is constantly apologizing for saying things she thinks others don’t want to hear and you’re going to play this as a heartwarming move on her part? Fuck. You.

    So of course this works and the queen’s heart grows three sizes and she’s going to let him be the kind of king he wants to be and why is emotional consistency at all important in a script? But our lead still is too scared to not leave and fully intends to run away, love a main character who’s an emotional coward. The queen admits to her she got the law firm to offer her the job and then offers her another job running the royal’s foundation and isn’t it great when our two leads get to be passive and their happily ever after gets arranged for them? The coronation happens, then smooch, the end.

    I hope the other royal-themed movies are better than this one. Maybe the plot hoops you have to jump through to get the American with the European royal take up too much time to have decent dialogue and interesting characters. There was zero spark between the leads, no depths to any of the supporting characters (have I ruined myself by starting off with Boxleitner as the third main character?), and everything just kind of arranged itself into a happy ending without the leads ever having to make any actual effort. Oh, and a bunch of stuff like the queen still being alive, the prince performing sleight of hand, they never pay off. The sets were fine if a bit shoestring, the direction was unnoticeable, but the script and performances were just so weak. I expected better from the writer of ‘Cube 2: Hypercube.’