A Royal Christmas Crush

First, there are real "ice hotels" built every year, and I suspect the one in this movie is Hotel Grace, built in Quebec.

Many people have commented on the ages of the cast, as "the Prince" looks as old or older than his supposed parents. In truth, the actor playing the King (43) is only four years the Prince's senior (39). The Queen, however, IS actually 21 years older. She just looks great at 60. However, Stephen Huszar is a pretty rough looking 39. I could easily peg him by eye as being in his 50s. Ouch!

The accents are simply irritating, especially Huszar's. The story is the same old Prince meeting the "common girl" with a local rival in the picture. The dialogue is trite and unconvincing ... at its best. At its worst, it's embarrassing.

There are great visuals of the hotel, and for me that's the only draw in this poorly written movie where the cast seems to be mailing it in. They simply have nothing in the way of spark or deep emotion.

By the way, the "spectacular sketches" of dog houses? LOL Simple line drawings that you could barely tell what they are. I'd have bagged the thing there but my wife hadn't had quite enough of it yet. After the next scene with the mother and daughter scheming for her to marry the Prince, she raised her eyebrows to the point I asked if she'd had enough, and she replied "OH YES!".

Hallmark's Christmas in July original movies are either really great (Crashing through the Snow) or major duds, and this one falls squarely in the latter camp. An inane premise (some nondescript Royal Family commissions an ice castle to be built each year for them to spend the holidays), terrible casting (pretty sure the Prince's mom is about the same age as the Prince) and an insipid plot drag this one to the depths of barely watchable. The royal family hardly spends any time in the ice castle. Stephen Huszar's accent comes and goes, and he can't decide if he's supposed to do an English accent or a Nordic accent, so mostly it comes across as a half-hearted attempt at trying to be a snob. A papparrazo wanders around snapping photos at his leisure. Where's security? The only thing this movie had going for it is Katie Cassidy has the prettiest eyes, which apparently won over Huszar because they are now an item.

'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 am so sick of all this royalty nonsense. And before you start screaming Megan and Princess Diana, Princess Di's family were aristocrats. Her father and brother were Earls and her grandfather was the 7th Earl Spencer. Megan was in the "commoner" category, according to royalty experts. And by the way, if you're going to do a royal story line you could at least observe royal protocols. You don't touch a royal without permission but in Hallmark you sure do.

The saccharin sweet drivel Hallmark is pumping is getting more and more ridiculous. It's been rehashed so often it's become a sad little trope that has elevated redundancy to a whole new level. Just stop.

It's like the writers just said, "Hey, you know we could keep this royal story line as a template. Just change the location of the fictional kingdom, the names of the two love interests and voila! We're done.

I KNOW they have other creative ideas because I watched The Christmas Quest and The Finnish Line this year which were very good. And previously they offered My Southern Family Christmas, Christmas at Notting Hill, A Heidelberg Holiday and My Norwegian Holiday all of which were delightful . I love the ones where you expand the characters and we learn the customs and rituals of where they are from. Three Wise Men and a Baby and its sequel were excellent.

Come on, writers, wake up that gray matter and give us more than the obligatory flour fight in the kitchen, the Christmas tree lighting in the town square (with all 18 persons of the town), the misunderstanding (which occurs always in the last 15 minutes) and the reconciliation, which always happens so the movie can end Hallmark happy and everyone is smiling.

If you've seen one royal Christmas story ... That's not totally true, but this movie has most of the usual plot threads. There is an iron maiden who dislikes everyone. There is a rival for the prince's hand. Happens to be the daughter who happens to be the iron maiden's (or iron matron's) daughter. There is a skeptical set of royal parents. There is the prince's assistant who like most such characters has been with the family for years and cherishes him like his own son. The thing that threatens the romance between the leads, which I usually call the conflict, was a bit unusual but had the usual result. The ending is mostly predictable but too much over the top in a few ways. The fact that the plot is unrealistic never stops writers of rom/coms especially royal ones. This one goes farther than most.

As you might guess from what I've said so far, I didn't think the story had much in the way of highs or lows. The dialogue was flat. Some of the scenery, including the ice "castle" was interesting. I didn't see much chemistry between Katie Cassidy and Stephen Huszar, but that might have been because Cassidy struck me as too stiff in general.