Red, White & Royal Blue (2023)

Right, I am not the demographic and I ought to have hated this. Not least because it starts off with one of my lazy cinema writing bête noires - the "King of England". There is no such title or person! Anyway, pretty swiftly we find ourselves watching an overly contrived cake incident that must have trashed the expensive shag pile at Buckingham Palace. The visiting son of the US President - "Alex" (Taylor Zakhar Perez) gets involved in an altercation with Prince “Henry”, the grandson of the King. A week later he is despatched by his mother (Uma Thurman) on a diplomatic rescue mission ahead of her looming re-election battle and negotiations for a trade deal. What now ensues is way better than I was expecting. It's a simple enough bromance/rom-com but it uses adult language and some decent writing to illustrate a courtship that benefits from two actors who actually appear to gel on screen. It does no harm that Perez is very easy on the eye and is quite charismatic - though, surely just a bit too old for school - and both men offer an assured and confident performance that avoids the worst of the sentimental pitfalls - even if we do still get a polo match. As it builds I rather surprisingly found myself engaged with the story. Sure, it's light and fluffy, but somehow it's very normalisation of a gay relationship between two of the world's (theoretical) A-listers is actually quite warm and funny. The budget must have gone on private jets, luxury hotel suites and a couple of his and his powder blue hoodies - and that left the poor newsreader to do an entire Presidential election campaign wearing the same top! Perhaps it is meant to be some sort of play on the search for purpose by a real Prince, but that doesn't matter. Don't look for depth or realism (it has none) but if you are looking for something just a bit quirkier and entertaining then read the tin first, then you might get a surprise. I did. (PS: Anyone else think the Parisian café scene is a re-shoot?)

There are three things necessary to make a gay romantic comedy work: It needs to involve a readily recognizable gay relationship, it needs an undeniable sense of romance and it has to be funny. However, this heavily diluted, glacially paced piece of insipid celluloid fluff has none of the above, and it truly escapes me how many critics and viewers have found this utterly bland exercise to be heartwarming, charming and involving. In telling the somewhat far-fetched story of an alleged romance between a British prince and the son of an American president who start out as comically exaggerated adversaries but end up supposedly finding true love with one another, writer-director Matthew López subjects his audiences to an unconvincing relationship wholly lacking in chemistry and stemming from an improbable courtship, much of which arises from a string of all-too-convenient, less-than-discreet engagements that are otherwise supposedly impossible to arrange and coordinate. What’s more, the film’s humor is virtually nonexistent and incorporates none of the edginess generally associated with gay comedies. In fact, it’s so dull and so safe that it makes most Hallmark Channel movies seem downright risqué by comparison. To its credit, the picture makes some modestly eloquent statements about LGBTQ+ equality (even if they’re nothing we haven’t already heard many times before), and it features a fine supporting performance by Sarah Shahi as a smart-mouthed, fast-talking presidential aide (arguably the only genuinely funny element in the film), but it misses the mark on so many other fronts that it’s hard to believe this project ever got green-lighted. It’s a shame that the door opened by “Bros” (2022) to make gay romcoms a more viable cinematic genre has been set back by this underwhelming effort. It’s also equally disappointing that an organization like Amazon Studios – one known for generally doing solid work – could let something as sub-par as this out into the movie marketplace. Let’s hope moviegoers can put this one quickly behind them and see the foregoing issues soon fixed going forward.

Everything about 'Red, White & Royal Blue' screams bad movie, yet somehow it manages to make itself watchable. I've not entirely sure how, as there honestly isn't one element of it that I'd class as absolutely good. The run time is too long, the acting is just OK, the story is (or should be, I guess) lousy and the dialogue is genuinely terrible, like toe-curlingly so. It, too, has the cheap feel of a Hallmark-esque film, well without that company's obligatory straightness, obvs. However, there's no doubting they make it work. I haven't got anything more to add, doing so would just be listing further reasons why this should suck but, evidently, doesn't. Pardon (the turkey?...) the pun btw. 🤪