Watched 'A Royal Christmas Engagement' with not the highest of expectations, fairly mixed actually. While loving Christmas for as long as can be remembered and having seen some surprisingly good Christmas films recently, films mixing Christmas and royalty have always varied with most ranging between mediocre and decent (with also some good and bad ones). The title sounded sweet but the concept sounded so been there, done that and flimsy.
The execution is even flimsier and actually turned out to be worse than expected, making for a right royal mess of a Christmas engagement (which turned out to not be much of one) and film. As much as it pains me to say it, as someone who is often generous-striving and who has always tried to see the good in the bad. With 'A Royal Christmas Engagement', it was actually quite hard to find any redeeming merits in a film with so many flaws and most of them awfully executed. Of all the films mixing Christmas and royalty, 'A Royal Engagement Engagement' for me is easily among the worst.
Only the beautiful looking castle stops the film from being a complete and utter disaster. And perhaps also an engaging turn from Mariah Robinson.
A beautiful looking castle however that was done no favours by the drab and poorly framed photography and the editing could have done with a tightening up. The direction is some of the most disorganised and leaden for any film seen recently and of all the recently seen Christmas films, clearly having no idea what to do with the story and the direction of the actors. The music is not particularly memorable and could have been used more subtly in placement and tone.
Furthermore one does expect cheese and schmaltz and allows some leeway, but both are so excessive quantity wise here (especially the cheese) that it was hard to take. And even more so when balanced so amateurishly. The story does absolutely nothing new with a premise that has been done to death and the formula is pretty much exactly what is expected. Emotionally, 'A Royal Christmas Engagement' falls completely flat and is barely existent. Everything is so disconnected and awkward and the charm and heart are just not there.
Neither is the character development, with the film overdoing it with the character flaws (especially Lauren's) and the characters don't grow. Neither does the inconsistently paced romance, that is under-utilised, barely there most of the time and then shows a little development abruptly for convenience sake. There is no tension, with the obligatory mis-understanding being so contrived and silly in execution, and the ending is too neat and rushed. Other than Robinson, the acting is really not good. Paige Bach has no warmth and plays her cold fish role too stiffly and coldly. James Nitti is even stiffer and overdoes the uptight-ness and awkwardness, coming over as too much of an introvert. There is no chemistry between them at all, which made everything after the deception discovery completely unbelievable.
Concluding, very bad and pretty much a mess. 2/10.
