A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding Parent Guide

The long-anticipated wedding between New York blogger, Amber (Rose McIver), and King Richard (Ben Lamb) of Aldovia is finally at hand – but both of the parties are miserable.

Richard is distressed because his national infrastructure program isn’t delivering the expected prosperity: to the contrary, people are losing their jobs and money is fleeing the country. He’s tied up in constant meetings and has little time to spend with his frustrated fiancée.

Amber’s frustrations are understandable. The palace protocol director (Sarah Douglas) is trying to turn Amber into a generic princess, limiting her activities and insisting she quit blogging. And beloved Queen Helena (Alice Krige) is determined that Amber have a spectacular wedding, so she’s hired world-famous wedding planner, Sahil (Raj Rajaj). Unfortunately, Sahil is completely uninterested in Amber’s personal style or hopes for her wedding. A hideous wedding dress and elaborate décor put Amber over the edge – and Richard doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to back her up.

Angry and worried, Amber puts together her squad – father Rudy (John Guerrasio), friends Melissa and Andy (Tairah Sharif and Joel McVeagh) and Princess Emily (Honor Kneafsey) to uncover the reasons behind the failure of the King’s economic initiative. Will they be able to save the day? Will Amber have the wedding of her dreams?

All rom-com viewers know they don’t need to worry about the plot: in fact, it’s best not to think about it at all. These films are better if you don’t think too hard. So it goes with this sequel to A Christmas Prince. The fun to be had is in the interactions between the characters, the multiple loony moments, and the chemistry between the romantic leads. To that end, the movie kind of works. It’s not great cinema, but fans of the genre will enjoy this clean, surprise-free, seasonal romance.

I only have two complaints about the movie. First, the villain is too easy to find. Seriously, I figured it out within minutes. Second, the wedding dress. Oh my gosh. Is it too much to ask that the wardrobe department iron or steam it? The dress is already hideously ugly – it looks like it came from a bargain basement sale at Sears in 1972 – but it’s also wrinkled. Why would director John Schultz sabotage the movie’s magical moment with such an awful mistake? Seriously, you can find pretty, modest dresses that don’t look like wrinkled bedsheets. I can guarantee that if this bothers me, it will definitely irk more committed genre viewers.

Flaws aside, if royal romances are your cup of tea, you can get out your favorite teacup, find some hot buttered crumpets, and settle down for the ride.