Do you remember that J. Lo mediocre "Maid in Manhattan" movie from two decades ago? This is a close or should I say heavily inspired copy of it. Why anybody at Reel One Entertainment green lighted this TV movie is beyond me. But before unpacking what is wrong with various things, let me start with the technical side of the movie.
It was shot in the winter, not in December, but still it was winter, and not in spring and especially summer like so many Hallmark TV movies. Audio production is actually pretty solid - no loud background music when cast is talking/speaking, music score is festive and nice, and no poor audio recording. I have to write this as ROE TV movies are notorious for that. There are no bad cuts either.
Unfortunately, movie suffers from the few serious technical issues. It takes place in New York City except it was shot in Hamilton, Canada, and I wouldn't even complain as the vast majority of movie takes place inside. However, like many other ROE TV movies, in this one they again overused NYC stock footage in between scenes. And yet for me personally the worst thing in the whole movie is the makeup on Steve Byers plus his hair (less worse, but still awful). Absolutely the worst makeup in any ROE TV movie and I watched hundreds of them! There are no words which can describe how bad is.
The cast is fine. I watched Cindy Sampson and Steve Byers in their previous TV movie (A Christmas Break) and they were fine. Unfortunately as I already wrote, because how Steve Byers looked ridiculous, I later used 10 sec skip function as I simply couldn't watch it any more. I would say that kid (Holly de Barros), Bukola Ayoka, and Ben Sanders were the best as their script was good enough.
I'm not going to blame writer for this rip off. I watched movies written by Jessica Randall, and they are ok. And here, the parts which were not direct rip off are also fine. So, what is wrong?
Just like in "Maid in Manhattan", the protagonist is single mother, this time with female kid, who works as housekeeper in luxury hotel, and when she was wearing expensive dress of the guest who didn't come, she was introduced as a wealthy socialite (mistaken for special guest trope). This time it isn't involved US senator, but an European crown prince. Act I is fine, because it could happen, however Act II is ridiculous because it's 2023 and internet, social networks, and smartphones are everywhere. Crown prince already had scandalous reputation, and there is no way "scam" could go for more than 24 hours. Of course it was discovered by media in the Act III when movie is suddenly again serious and realistic.
But there is more. What kind of names are Neve and Prim? Neve is probably not even used in Irland any more, and Prim is not even a name. And again they managed to cram every trope and stereotype about European royalty. Yes, obviously, Canadian cast again speaks British English, and yes, continental European monarchy with Italian name obviously have ruling family with typical English names and surnames because of logic.
One note that not everything is bad about script as secondary story involving Faith and Peter is actually decent, and that was the sole reason I watched movie till the end. Acts I and III are mostly fine.
Just watch 2:46 min long trailer (for some reasons not posted here) as it's the ROE one and for some unknown reason(s) it shows whole movie compressed, and save your valuable free time.
