A Not So Royal Christmas

6.9 stars.

A woman (D'Orsay) works for a tabloid and poses a catchy story for the editor: to find the long absent prince of a European country and make a great headline for the "TMZ" wannabe magazine. So she goes to Europe to find this prince (Kemp) whose been absent for years. Rumor has it he doesn't like to make public appearances, so people have actually forgotten what he looks like. Kemp always plays a prince of some country near England with his English accent and all. D'Orsay is the usual Hallmark version of the American woman who falls for the prince. But this time there is a twist and it is interesting, but it doesn't change the formula enough to make this an original film.

Nothing is different with this movie, it's the same blueprint and that is disappointing. We've seen one too many at this point, no really, this is the last straw. Does this mean I will cease further Hallmark viewing? No, but I am not happy that I have to sift through this drudgery still. I thought Christmas 2023 would usher in some changes, but they still insert the same stuff in too large a proportion.

Enough of the interrupted kiss, and the dead parents. I've had it with people eating pancakes and doughnuts for breakfast, cookies, cakes, and candy canes for lunch, and gingerbread, pie, ice cream, more cookies and cakes for dinner. Then there are the midnight snacks of more cookies with milk. Sometimes they have ice cream, which is always totally melted by the way. Instead of 8 glasses of water a day, it's 6 glasses of cocoa and 2 glasses of coffee. Be gone with the best friend who always assumes the lead character is "in love" with some random person of the opposite sex. You know, when the main character says something like: "Me and Bobby were riding on a bus and Bobby says..." and the best friend replies: "Oh, so you talked with a man, I bet he was cute". And the lead shrugs and acts all coy... ENOUGH! Or how about when the Mom tells the daughter, "You are my favorite daughter" and you know what the response will be: "Mom, you know I'm your only daughter". I know that's how Hallmark inserts tidbits of information so we get a better picture of who is who and what is what. And back to the food, sometimes it's pizza for dinner, always pizza, except for one meal only, the actual Christmas meal is a turkey or ham and mashed potatoes etc. And what about in the city when the romance has begun, what do the leads always eat when they get hungry on the main street? Hotdogs. Really? Nobody eats hot dogs and looks like that. In all my years working for a government agency rarely did anyone ever eat hot dogs. Only children eat hot dogs. Adults eat hamburgers, it's the way we do stuff in America. And so no wonder people die over the holidays, America is obese, heart disease is rampant. They are modeling their lives after these Hallmark characters. You know that none of these actors actually eat this stuff. I guarantee they chew it for a scene and as soon as the director says "cut" it's spit into the garbage.

I have a friend who has personally boycotted all Hallmark movies and products, because she says it's all just a Christmas scam. They are a holiday company, selling the holidays, the whole season of Christmas is a Hallmark money making machine, she says. I'm convinced she's correct.

Here we have there reverse of the typical falling in love with royalty story. Here our heroine falls in love with royalty, but he's only pretend royalty ... pressed into service on the spur of the moment to attract tourism to a small European city where a Count is supposed to live. The real "Count" abdicated for love with a beach babe he met in Daytona.

Will Kemp is charming as the ne'er do well whom a journalist mistakenly takes for the missing Count in her mission to get a tabloid story about him. Brooke D'Orsay is the journalist who falls for the Count.

There isn't nearly as much real relationship building and personality as I'd like to see, but the different sort of plot carries the movie, and we enjoyed it. Not one we'd schedule for repeat showings, I don't think, but it worked for one evening.

Brooke D'Orsay (Charlotte)'s green dress at the end was gorgeous and I thought she and Will Kemp (Adam) played off of each other very well.

Adam has returned home for a short term position as gardener at the home of the Count in the fake land of Sorhagen, Nordin. There he is mistaken by the Royal gossip columnist Charlotte as the Count of Sorhagen. The Royal advisers ask Adam to play along as the real count abdicated his title six months prior...and they haven't figured out what to do yet and are worried about how it will hurt the local economy. Charlotte also lies claiming to be from a more legitimate publication instead of her gossip rag in order to secure an exclusive interview with the very reclusive count.

Will both their lies come out? And will their burgeoning feelings hold up to the truth?

I love Will Kemp and thought he was great. Both he and Brooke D'Orsay played well off of each other. My only real complaint is that there are so many real places, with real royalty...it is a shame that they are still using fake kingdoms and customs when the real ones are infinitely interesting. I liked it, but I think I would place it on a mid tier of the Hallmark Holiday films, a watch and delete.

I always look forward to a Hallmark movie with Will Kemp, but I must say this one was disappointing. I think Will Kemp was great, but there is absolutely NO chemistry between him and Brooke D'Orsay (who I must admit is not one of my favorite Hallmark actresses although I have nothing against her). The story has nothing romantic to it, I don't get why Charlotte and Adam would actually fall in love. It makes no sense, they're just lying to each other all the time, they want different things and are not above using each other to get it. And yet I actually found the story very flat : no great romantic moment, no great enmity eather. I so wanted to like this movie !

Well, it was a clever movie and the opposite of the Prince and the Pauper. It liked something. I don't know if it was chemistry, costuming, writing, or the sets. But it was lacking something and all I could focus on at the ball scene was that that green dress was begging for a necklace!!!

Their costuming department is seriously lacking, I've seen that multiple times in multiple movies. Give the women some proper respectable jewelry!

I do enjoy these Hallmark movies because they are so predictable and therefore easy on my anxiety as they always have a good ending but as I said, previously, this one lacked something. Creativity maybe? I'm not sure.