Crown Prince of Christmas

The movie is a fairy tale, and it has a fairy tale quality throughout so that you have to suspend your expectations of reality. The plot is unbelievable, but so are fairy tales. At times I thought the dialogue was stale.

In my opinion, the two leads did a wonderful job of working with the material. A few of the other actors I thought were very ineffective. (But it's not about that; it's about the story and what happens to the main characters.)

There was an instance where Cindy was so moved by a situation that she had genuine tears, which brought tears to my eyes. The prince also looked a bit teary as well. That depth of feeling was what surprised me, as well as the fact that I have continued to think about this movie after watching it. That doesn't happen with a total flop.

We've made a heroic effort the last few years to catch every Hallmark Christmas movie, last year some of the GAF movies, and this year all of both. We don't make an effort for the Lifetime movies, because in our opinion, they're much more miss than hit.

The last four years of Hallmark have gone downhill in our eyes, and we've made the decision to cease our quest to watch them all. We'll continue to sample our favorite stars and possibly check some reviews for the rest. Movies like this made that decision easier to arrive at.

I think all three networks have overdone it. Too many plots are just rehashed versions of previous movies, and some of the efforts to "do something new" stretch so far out they crash and burn.

So what does all that have to do with GAF's Crown Prince of Christmas? It's a harmless little movie, but with an absurd premise and some ham-fisted writing and direction which embarrassed us for the actors and writers at times. I had to get used to my wife saying "Oh Good God!", like the cut-away take where the hotel employee has to stuff his fist in his mouth in an emotional reaction to the ubiquitous wrap-up kiss.

I liked the characters, it's just that every few minutes there were scenes too stupid to believe ... either from atrocious dialogue, poorly wrought motives and reactions, or overplayed cliches. GAF had a couple of very nice movies this year, but they've also had some real stinkers, and so has Hallmark.

This movie didn't offend our senses enough to rate it lower than 4, but it's not one we'll ever consider watching again.

There are a few good moments because the 2 leads are basically good actors and have a certain amount of rapport. The premise is cute (it's a Christmas movie after all) but most of the characters are just plain annoying and one dimensional. The make-up for Cindy Busby, her prince, and her family was truly awful. All their faces just looked dirty and heavy. She has a natural beauty but that was destroyed by that "muddy" look. And her mother was truly the most annoying character I've seen in one of these movies. Ever. Fire the director. And the makeup artist. Or re-train them. This is passable as a time filler if you're up for a day of Christmas movie binge watching, but doesn't stand well on its own. Cindy's singing was passable and fun to see but was built up to be more impressive than it actually was.

This was awful. The plot was entirely predictable and the two leads had no chemistry. I was distracted by the female lead's yellow teeth and her makeup was so awful it made me not want to look at the screen. The women playing her mom and sisters are truly awful actresses and their scenes were so bad and cringy it have me secondhand embarrassment.

If the movie is about a royal family, I expect the sets to reflect that. Apparently there was no budget for the decor because the fancy gala looked like a middle school dance with dollar store decorations. Hallmark would never.

And finally, there was so much emphasis on the lead being a breathtaking singer and we were supposed to be blown away with her big performance, but it fell flat. Her voice was neither good nor bad, but they should have had an actress with a GREAT voice considering we were supposed to be in awe of the voice.

This is hands down one of the worst GAF movies I've seen yet. A ridiculous story line about yet another "prince in hiding". He's a prince, pretending to not be a prince, pretending to be a prince. Yep, that bad.

Cindy Busby cannot sing. Please stop casting her as someone with a fabulous voice. I muted the tv every time she sang. If this isn't her real voice, stop using the singer. She's not much of an actress either, I've seen her in many films, and she is always the same character. The lead actor was ok, nice looking, and did the best he could with the dreadful dialog.

The prince's parents were awful, fake accents, horrible wig on the mother, not believable at all, not to mention the actress playing the Queen isn't much older than the Prince. She must have had him when she was 10.

The makeup is terrible and off putting. Applied so thick and cakey, especially on the men. The scenes very fake. The only redeeming thing was the pretty baked goods we got to see a little of.