Un Natale principesco

Fred Olen Ray, who knows a successful Christmas formula and sticks with it, wrote and produced his best, of the ones I've seen. With low budget movies, the casting, setting and writing are especially important, and the two leads (who also worked together in 2022 for "Prince and Pauper Christmas") have wonderful chemistry. It was nice to see my hometown East Aurora on display again, and it was a treat to see Dennis DiPaolo play the role of the server Dennis in his family's own restaurant in Buffalo, but at about the halfway mark, I forgot about the local aspects of the movie and began to root for the two leads to fall in love (which was virtually assured), and it was the way in which the relationship developed that made it so easy to watch without taking a break. I also noticed that Don The Shopkeeper (filmed at Vidler's 5 & 10 in East Aurora) has been in previous Ray movies. I hope that the movie company decides to come back to East Aurora for another movie - Christmas or any time. A very pleasant movie to watch and I hope its short run on the Great American Family network continues on a more accessible platform, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime.

In my opinion the most unbearable part of this movie was the actor portraying the prince - he tried SO hard to appear charming that it constantly looked like he was emulating "sexy squidward", and not in a good way. The acting itself definitely fell by the wayside (not to mention the accent but that's to be expected I guess).

The result was that any scene with him was just immensely distracting and comedic at inappropriate times. The rest of the movie was pretty by-the-book, but there wasn't any proper conflict.

The production value was okay.

Overall I wouldn't recommend it. Even in the narrow category of fake country royalty christmas movies there's better to be had.

From the same people who made A Royal Christmas On Ice comes a new story with the same Prince? I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a sequel to the other one or what but it's got John Stoddard as Prince Jonathan (formerly Prince John in ARCOI) and William Baldwin (I guess not a sequel as in the first he was Daryl and in this he's Jarrod) and another lackluster script.

A lot of cringe moments, second hand embarrassment, which is a shame because like so many it had potential.

Like why make the same actor once again a prince with the same name? It's just confusing if you've seen both. Was this supposed to be a reboot with some changes?

Anyway, JS and WB do passable jobs with the script given. But too much cringe over all to recommend.

It seems like every rom/com network has to have at least one royal story at Christmas. This one combines an ambitious reporter looking for an exclusive interview. This one is a bit unusual in that the reporter is honest. The obvious disaster occurs completely by accident, at least from the reporter's side. To add to the drama, it happens after a strong segment emphasizing values and honesty.

There is a petty rival but she only has a small part.

Reality. What is that? The prince is quickly smitten and within a day of knowing her is already falling in love. Katie is quickly smitten too.

But then there is the predictable conflict. One part of it is obvious, but a second part of it is not so obvious beforehand, although there is at least one early reference that foreshadows it. Either way, the conflict is a real muddle, Actually the issue behind it is overblown. What the prince did is common and the fact that he brings it up first only looks better on him.

The closing cleanup is again obviously predictable, but seemed to me a bit clumsy.

The acting is inconsistent. Likewise the script. I usually find it difficult to find chemistry between leads in a royal movie because princes are by nature reserved.

I think i'd have given it an 8 if Jonathan Stoddard wasn't hamming up the whole prince accent/smile quite to the extent he was. Wasn't awful but he perhaps put it on too thick trying to go for an english aristocracy trope.

Outside of that, all the other characters were great, and some of the scenes were particularly moving. Think Santa Claus! The film did the settings slightly differently than most; everyone was prosperous, no one got stranded and there wasn't insane outside interference from the parents of either of the two main leads. In gneral, yeah, quite a warm film that didn't push in too hard on cliches . I'd defo recommend.