I remember the day I first found out about Netflix’s sequel to their very successful film, A Christmas Prince. I was so excited, eagerly awaiting its release date. A Christmas Prince had such an amazing storyline, and I was very impressed with the acting overall, so I was rather disappointed when A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding didn’t meet my expectations.
Although the sequel to any movie is usually never as good as the original, I had high hopes for this film. However, I found it a bit dry. It wasn’t terrible, just not as spectacular as the first film. It’s one of those movies that makes you say, “It was fine, but I wouldn’t watch it again.”
The storyline itself wasn’t interesting enough, and I felt like the director tried to make the film too much like the actual Royal Wedding that took place earlier this year. Furthermore, the intrigue of the first movie was watching the relationship develop between Amber and Prince Richard, but in the sequel, there’s barely any screen time between them at all.
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In this film, the wedding is pushed aside while the mystery of where the country’s money disappeared to becomes the most important element. In my opinion, it’s rather odd to include The Royal Wedding in the movie title and then not keep the focus primarily on Amber and Richard’s engagement and then marriage.
I think that the writer and director were trying to accomplish too much in this movie. While they were trying to break away from the traditional Christmas film that narrows-in on love, it was poorly executed, and it just didn’t hold my attention. If anything, I came to dislike Richard’s character in this movie, though I really admired his character in the first movie.
Netflix usually makes such amazing original movies, so I’m hoping that this was just a fluke and not a new trend. I’ll be keeping an eye out for their future Christmas movies to see if they follow the same pattern, though I’m hoping that they don’t!
All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this movie, but if you’re like me and you feel the need to see it simply because you enjoyed the first one, then by all means, watch it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.