If there’s one thing I love every holiday season, it’s watching bad Christmas movies. Hallmark movies with ridiculous and cliché plots are my go-to stress reliever, and the sheer amount of Christmas spirit never fails to get me in the mood to make hot chocolate or put up decorations. Most of the Christmas movies I’ve watched are relatable with hometown heroes and ordinary girls who rediscover the magic of Christmas. However, I’ve recently discovered a very specific niche of movies that Netflix has created a universe of — instead of focusing on regular people and small towns, these movies take place in a universe where there’s apparently a plethora of small, vaguely European countries with plenty of eligible heirs to the throne and a lot of enthusiasm for Christmas.
While “The Princess Switch” trilogy on Netflix is fairly popular, I had no idea that Netflix had expanded the universe to include three more royal Christmas movies: “A Christmas Prince” trilogy, as well as a movie about a time-traveling knight, “The Knight Before Christmas.” For anyone keeping count, this brings us up to a whopping four Vanessa Hudgens in this universe, three in the “Princess Switch” and one in “The Knight Before Christmas.”
“The Princess Switch” follows Stacy, a baker from Chicago ( Hudgens #1), who travels to a small country to enter a televised baking competition, coincidentally running into a duchess, Lady Margaret, who looks exactly like her ( Hudgens #2) and who is engaged to the crown prince. The two switch places so that Lady Margaret can enjoy two days of normalcy before ascending to the throne, resulting in a predictable but charming adventure. “The Princess Switch 2: Switched Again” once again involves Stacy and Lady Margaret switching places, but this time also adds an evil cousin of Lady Margaret (Hudgens #3, but she’s blonde now), and criminal shenanigans ensue. “The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star” takes a hard turn into a combination heist-Christmas situation, with all three Hudgens (Hudgenses?) working to save a Christmas relic.
“A Christmas Prince” once again features the crown prince of a very Christmas-oriented country, but this time with a journalist who pretends to be a nanny to the prince’s younger sister in order to investigate rumors of an abdication. While it’s not the most memorable, it’s certainly entertaining enough. Its sequels: “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding” and “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby” are self-explanatory, but surprisingly, the theme of crime-stopping continues. “The Knight Before Christmas” is less overtly royal, with a time-traveling knight being the main love interest, but the references to the kingdoms in the other movie series make it part of the universe.
Obviously, these movies aren’t cinematic masterpieces — the writing is questionable and the stories are incredibly predictable and somewhat formulaic. However, if you want a break from the small-town romance of Hallmark movies but with the same amount of Christmas spirit, they’re certainly a good choice.