A Royal Corgi Christmas

I was all for watching a movie about a rambunctious royal corgi, but when I first saw who would be the male lead, I quickly got discouraged. Jordan Renzo just didn't fit the image of a royal prince. Hallmark has had it's fair share of actors portraying future kings and they have until now fit the role perfectly. Unfortunately, Jordan Renzo falls below the benchmark. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's a good actor but for me, this was just the wrong role for him.

So despite the cuteness of the corgi and Hunter King's bubbly presence as Cecily Bowman, the dog trainer, I just couldn't find a good reason to finish watching this movie.

I am not Hunter kings biggest fan, but I actually think she did well in this film and I loved her in her Royal hiking outfit with the cap. Prince Edmund is played well by Jordan Renzo, but the dogs are the real stars of this film starting with Mistletoe, of course!

Prince Edmund's staff hire dog trainer and author of Dog-ma, Cecily (played by Hunter King). She comes with bit of an agenda, to get the Royal family to sponsor her charity, which predictably leads to bad feelings on the Prince's part as he sees her as a grifter.

I really appreciated that the Princess and the Queen were played by good people...in fact there is only one misguided member of the Royal household. It. Was fun to have Cecily's friend and business partner, Jacob, be a Royal watcher (as I do know they exist).

Overall I enjoyed it...but mainly because of the dogs, so I recommend it to dog lovers especially those fond of Corgi's (whichbyiu can guess by the title).

There have been nannies, and world-class skaters, and matchmakers, and so many other excuses to spend time with a king or a prince. Another royal angle usually sees the prince or princess in the US where he or she is thrown together with the commoner in their world. This time it's a dog trainer at the castle. The prince has the reputation of a playboy but that persona is never seen in this movie.

There are gags centering around the dog's antics. There is some castle politics, but this queen and mother is surprisingly welcoming and so not the source of the problem.

The leads have mild chemistry. The acting is OK. The dialogue is OK. But there are no great highs or lows or surprises.

Let's face it, most of the originality in this film goes to the dogs. They're cute and you do get a couple of almost real dog-training tips out of the experience.

For the romance, we have a famous dog trainer with a successful book and a Youtube presence, and a screw-up prince who may soon become King when his mother steps down from the throne. Of course, she has a long-denied romance with a handsome royal advisor. Don't they all?

The princess would have stolen the movie if they gave her more scenes, they did a better job of writing that character than the romantic leads, who seem to fall in love more because they like the problem dog than they find real affinity themselves.

The ending is utterly predictable with the unsolvable crisis occurring with a mere seven minutes of screen time left to suddenly solve it ... which is the timing for 95% of Hallmark romances.

Still, there were some fun moments and a couple of real laughs. For us, it's worth a watch but not repeat viewings.

Hallmark and all the other rom-com film producers always screw up movies about royalty, it's usually fake with bad scripts and acting and direction and this is one of the worst. The script and dialog is just bad, there are better actors out there with real English accents, the accents here were not good. The plot was uninteresting and I turned it off after an hour. They should get a new casting director.

Writers of these rom-coms should watch "The Crown", "The Queen", "The King's Speech" and other solidly written films that are about royalty. They should bring in good British screenwriters when they're going to do stories about royals, not cartoon writers. Scenes can be comedic without being just plain dumb, it's like these were written by 3rd graders.

I gave it a rating of "2" because I liked the corgis.