Did I just watch the worst Christmas movie? Very possibly, yes. | Holiday 2021 // A Christmas Princess

Jessica is a struggling chef living in a trendy New York borough. Prince Jack, who's in the city for his family's annual Christmas charity dinner, finds himself in need of a last-minute chef for a royal event when he meets Jessica. 

For weeks now I've been announcing how in the holiday spirit, and specifically the Christmas spirit, I was. I think I'd listened to some Christmas songs and eyed some movies, but I hadn't done anything concrete to reflect that sentiment. Wanting to test out the new Watch Parties feature on Twitch, I perused Amazon for a suitable film and landed on A Christmas Princess (2019). A first time effort, I didn't have the largest viewership (at most I had three viewers at a time) but I had a great time.

--SPOILERS AHEAD--

The movie introduces our male love interest, Prince John, aka Jack (Travis Burns), with the sense that he's supposed to be this wowing babe who knocks the wind out of your sails. In reality, Jack and his accompanying look less like royalty and high-class staff and more like a rich financier and his accountant. Here rich is very subjective and quite relative. Because, no, who wears oversized pinstriped suits? My sister was in the watch party for the first 10 minutes or so, and what she noticed really set the tone. The female lead, Jessica (Shein Mompremier), her hair was sloppy looking. An ill-blended wig or piece. Jack, she appropriately noted, looked like a great value Sprouse brother. Not that that's a bad thing necessarily but I couldn't unsee it.

As one expects and hopes for from a holiday movie, there's a formulaic romance and lots of plot points lacking logic that rapidly rush the storyline along. An abundance of small-town feel often clashes with an unfeeling, unrelatable urbanity. The locations look quaint and a large about of belief demands to be suspended. And that all applied, in abundance. But sometimes it was too much. You can set your story in New York City if you want to, but no one is conflagrating the Big Apple with the on-site filming location of Buffalo, NY. We're in New York City, supposedly, but the only non-White characters are the female lead and her parents? Sorry, can't do all that deception.

An imagined kingdom with a mishmash of accents is a must if royalty makes an appearance in the story. The Kingdom of Edgemont is a place I believed I'd construct in Australia if accents were to be believed. The main male lead is portrayed by an Australian actor after all. A handful of Americans forcing some English-adjacent accents lends credence to that theory as well, but then the prince mentioned he was on some Junior European sports team and all that went out the window.

The most inconsistent thing was the crux of the story. A failing restauranteur (it was a diner) gets offered an opportunity to cater a high-end, high paying event. But for some reason she spends like a third of the movie convincing herself or being convinced to accept the job? Or when she was convinced she was demanding and refusing very obvious things that would have made her job easier? 

Prince: *offers new worksite for prep work*
Jessica: 'Sorry, I'm fine working where I am.'

Prince:*gives unspecified amount of money for equipment, materials, and labor costs*
Diner staff: 'This machine is $500.'

Sir, you're in the food industry.

Jessica: 'This high profile job could generate publicity for the restaurant.'
Also Jessica: 'Unwanted publicity is being generated from this picture of us together.'
Again, also Jessica: *walks arm in arm with prince five minutes later*

The prince, very foolishly, invites Jessica, his caterer, and at that point nothing else, and her parents to meet his parents. At said meeting his mother is rude to Jessica. Jessica directs all anger at Jack who'd been nothing but apologetic and protective of her during the dinner. 

I'm not even going to talk costuming. Or the burnt cookies Jessica's mother's made. But of course everything ends well and the lovebirds end up together. 

The subplot that had be choking was the insert of the military family. Apparently the father has been away for just two years, but that's enough time that the son has become a misguided thieving youth. Because as the movie verbalizes, what can you expect when a father is missing from a household? 

*eye roll*

We meet said boy when he's stealing a mirror for his mother (aww) and bumps into the prince, who upon learning from the shopkeeper (no slack was to be given on his part apparently) their harrowing tale, just gives another wad of cash to cover the incidentals. No price is ever named. All that, fine, niceties, kindnesses, cool. Why, why pray tell, does the movie end with the prince airing their business at his charity event and surprising them with the mirror AND THEIR DAD, BACK FROM HIS TWO YEAR TOUR?! 

I simply could not.

This movie was a 2019 release but cellphones and tablets are near non-existent. Near every trope was included, to the point that I questioned whether the script was written by a bot or not. Disque, per IMDb, there were two writers, but okay. But because every trope could be found it was the sappy Christmas movie on steroids. And I loved it. 

I'm not going to rate this movie, that's not what Christmas movies are for. Instead, I wrote this long piece on it as an ode to this cinematic experience, whatever it was. I watched it through Amazon but it is currently available on Pluto TV. Most importantly, it set the tone for the season. I'm now ready to speed binge holiday movies and see if I can find one to top the cheese. It's an experience, so I'm recommending it. 

Watch out for my Holiday 2021 (#Holiday2021) series, where I think I'll be recapping Holiday movies I'm watching this season and other festive things if they appear.