Private Princess Christmas

Retired Army officer checking in here. 29 years in one active or reserve component of either the US Air Force or US Army. I saw the promos and thought the idea had potential. The last few years before retiring from the Army, I worked with high school-level Junior ROTC cadets from a poor urban school district, and they had a lot of the same issues as the "adult" trainees in this movie regarding self-discipline. I thought this had the potential for a great storyline. Then I watched it fall flat on its face!

To use the words of General George S. Patton, "The bilious b------s who wrote that stuff... don't know anything more about {the military} than they do about f--- ing! (And yes, George C. Scott said "fornicating" in his title role in the 1970 movie PATTON, but the real Patton used the REAL F-word!)

It became painfully obvious that nobody involved with the production of this movie ever served in either the US or Canadian armed forces. All they know about military training is the same tired old cliches from watching other movies written by other bilious b------s who don't know either.

A TEN day boot camp? A Junior ROTC summer camp lasts only one or two days more than that, but every cadet attending has had at least a year of classroom instruction before that to prep them in the basics of military customs and courtesies and drill and ceremonies to optimize the use of that time. Every minute is used for a training activity from Reveille (wake-up call) to Lights Out (bedtime). You don't just lollygag and shoot the breeze and argue with the instructors. No activity is optional. Real active military basic training for raw recruits fresh off the streets takes several weeks even for those branches with the least training.

The writers have no concept of military rank structure or command relationships. The things that happened between the Princess and the Captain would never happen in that situation in real life without both of them getting dismissed from the camp and the Captain facing further disciplinary action. This review would probably be twice as long if I were masochistic enough to rewatch the movie and itemize each and every goof and flaw. Let me just say that I can't name anything they got right.

Hallmark has made more than its share of military and veteran themed movies and most of them are decent if not pretty good. I'll go so far as to say that this movie could've been salvaged or even made pretty good with a competent military technical advisor. Heck, if I had a DeLorean with a Flux Capacitor, I'd go back in time and take that job at Scale salary (or even free if allowed by law) just to keep it from becoming the train wreck it turned out to be!

It's a tale as old as time. A princess fails to train her Christmas tree-sniffing goat properly and gets sent to an American bootcamp for entitled people in order to prove that one day she can become queen. I mean, gee-whiz, again?!

Let's give Private Princess Christmas credit for the most ridiculous premise of the year, but not much else in this fish-out-of-water tale that is not royal in any way.

Wingravia's Princess Violet (Ali Skovbye) is the only daughter of the queen who might inherit the throne in this make believe Eastern European country of glaringly fake British accents. According to the queen, she needs some work to get the promotion. The queen finds a 10-day military boot camp in the US, that should do the trick.

The camp is littered with a crypto bro, an arrogant football player, the daughter of a rich guy and some other people whose story's just didn't land. Ryan (Derek Klena) runs the camp after rejoining the Army (maybe?) or just teaching. It's pretty loosey-goosey on the details and nobody is heading off to war after bootcamp.

As expected, our entitled princess tries to fake and cheat her way through the tests, but ends up revealing a heart of gold and some great American Sign Language skills.

We're light on love, heavy on fake accents and camo.

Cast Kudos: Tanja Dixon-Warren, who played Squibby and was apparently the only other employee of this elite camp. She was believable in her role and deserved her own story! Justice for Squibby!

Measuring Christmas Magic: None. Zip.

Alternative Movie Titles: First, let's discuss the title we got. Boo. No. Private Princess, sounds like a shy princess, not what I suspected they were going for-Private Benjamin. There was nearly no Christmas, so putting it in the title is court marshall worthy. Alternative titles: Princess Bootcamp Holiday; A royal salute Holiday; Bootcamp for Entitled People.

5.4 stars.

It's not the worst thing I've seen, I've seen a whole lot worse. People say it's the worst movie Hallmark has ever made, but while the plot and the silliness and absurdity might be adjacent to the worst, the music, production value and acting are not.

I don't rate the movie in my bottom ten, I've seen almost a thousand Hallmark movies. However, it's certainly in the bottom 5%.

I feel if a film is not technically the trashiest of the trash, for sake of accuracy, I'll tell it like it is.

The actors are okay, the cinematography is good, the music is good, the sets are slightly lacking. What is extremely bad about this film is the story, theme, plot and dialogue. It's a joke. But like I said, these do not comprise the full experience. You have to take into account, the entertainment value, acting, the lighting the music direction. So overall, this is definitely in the bottom of the barrel, and a lost cause, but not utterly garbage.

Okay, so we have writers who decided to do a take-off on Private Benjamin, add in a little Hallmark Royal Trope (in this case a princess), wedge in a love interest, and try to make something funny.

Well, there was one laugh and a few chuckles, but their script failed to live up to their ambition for this movie. They got across that the princess was spoiled, but never could add any real meat to her change in the ten-day boot camp.

Not nearly enough happened between the princess and the captain to build a relationship, so the love story fell flat. The captain's best moments were early on when he manned the returns desk at a Walmart/Target type retail store, and that was over very early.

It's watchable, barely. We won't be repeating the experience.

This movie is unbelievably bad, primarily due to the script but not helped by the acting or directing. Rather used to Hallmark movies not having the best acting, being a bit light on production quality, and not having the strongest scripts. But the script for this movie is just terrible. Cannot stress how bad it is. The concept of a bunch of spoiled brats being sent to a boot camp seems like a great opportunity for some hard knocks, moments of personal growth, and big laughs. This movie has none of that.

All of the humor consists of the same recycled jokes from other "boot camp" movies. Although other movies over the years have managed to make old jokes funny again, this movie fails every time. The moments that are supposed to be funny are recognizable, just not funny.

Hard knocks? Not here. Any attempts to "push" the brats are weak, including "the shredder", the lamest obstacle course conceivable and somehow the ultimate challenge they must overcome. This is taken even further when their proverbial "drill sergeant" is taken to task for being too hard on the bunch of whining brats, and starts to dial it back. This lack of adversity is problematic because it means that any moments of personal growth are impossible.

And yet, And yet somehow they do manage personal growth. Or at least that is what we are told as the story wraps up and the brats all start congratulating each other on how far they have come. But they haven't, at least not on screen making the whole thing a frustrating mess.

And of course there is romance, somehow. Again, the story pushes through with the expected romance, despite the princess never really changing from the awful person she started out being. Again, a terrible script that just fails in every way imaginable.

Skip this one.