A Royal Christmas Crush

Okay I know these are Hallmark movies but this one is so far fetched with the ages of the actors it's just absolutely absurd.

The actor playing Prince Henry (Stephen Huszar) must be pushing 40. There's nothing wrong with that except when you have the actress playing his mother, the Queen as being in her 30's. Really the 1 grey streak in her hair does not qualify her to be 60. And they don't even list the actor who plays the King but he looks to be in his early 40s.

The Prince crush story has been done so many times, I have lost count. Boring.

I just can't image there is no one at Hallmark that can come up with a better story or someone else that has to say enough already!!!

1. If you are going to have a romance featuring a prince, get someone who can actually speak with a consistent accent or just don't bother. Stephen Huszar is a good actor and certainly didn't deserve this.

2. Come up with a new approach. Recycling the same old plot is sad. The interfering Brigitta who tries to besmirch the prince's love interest is just downright stupid! Credit us with more intelligence. Birgitta should have been fired and/or tossed in jail.

3. Does anyone who is staying in an Ice Hotel really get romantic? It is literally FREEZING! They are wearing coats and gloves throughout, yet they go get in a hot tub, which will result in them freezing when they get out. That scene seemed gratuitous so we could view Stephen Huzsar's chest. But Ava wears a jacket in the hot tub.

4. At the Royal Ball, the costumes were awful. What's with the woman in the tight yellow sausage dress?? Can't afford to hire anyone else?

DO Better, Hallmark!!!

'A Royal Christmas Crush' Not the best example of a Hallmark Royal movie. For every 'One Royal Holiday' there is one of these: a run of the mill movie redoing tired old tropes with zero imagination.

Quality over quantity is, I think, a phrase Hallmark needs to abide by more often. Just because you can show 40-odd Christmas movies in October-December and a few more for Christmas in July, doesn't mean you should.

'A Royal Christmas Crush' suffers from poor accents (why does every one of these countries, purported to be somewhere in Europe, seem to speak with a British accent?) and very stereotypical characters, and the key fact that the leads - Katie Cassidy and Stephen Huszar - do not have the necessary chemistry. I must admit that the ice castle setting was cool, but, again, it seems every twelfth Hallmark movie these days is set in one - so the originality is starting to wane.

I don't know why the writers of this movie just had to have her career interest in building "sustainable housing communities ". The whole point of watching Hallmark movies, especially one with a romance with a royal prince or princess is to get away from reality for a couple of hours. I don't want to hear about, listen to dialog about topics, like climate, or the environment that's are already covered 24/7 on the news channels.

Next, it was pretty obvious that they essentially used the same filming location and concept (an ice hotel) as they did for the Hallmark movie Winter Castle. Even the lead female characters had essentially the same color hair.

I don't generally review that often because it's Hallmark, & I mean, you know what you're getting into. This movie was terrible! The plot is chewed up, but fine, whatever. This ice castle is too unique to keep using over & over again, but fine, whatever. But the casting?? Katie Cassidy can barely move her new lips or close her mouth & she used to be wonderful from the days of Gossip Girl & on! Trying to watch her speak dialogue was painful. And if they really wanted Stephen Huzsar to have an accent, they really should've paid for a better dialect coach for him. That accent was half American, a quarter Valley, & 3/4 no one knows. And finally, it's 2023 - the bare minimum you can do is change the date on an iPhone so it doesn't show March 12th, 3:13AM in a text convo that's supposed to take place right before Christmas. There's definitely enough in the production budget for that. The only reason I finished this film is because I'm Type A & needed to cross it off of my Hallmark Movie Checklist. Would never recommend it to anyone.