Christmas with a Crown

Such a joyous Holiday Movie! The acting is incredible, and the message at the end left me feeling happy and full of Holiday cheer! Highly recommend if you're looking for a Holiday movie to watch.

Prince of some made-up European country escapes to snowy American town (anonymously, of course) to have a Christmas without tradition and formality. Meets woman on a mission. Rest is par for the course.

It's the really bad English accents that grate. The valet, Arthur, who hot foots it over to America, has an even worse English accent than Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins - it's like listening to nails down a blackboard. I would have expected better from Teryl Rothery but sadly her attempt at Received Pronunciation is also under-trained.

There's enough English actors out there - even in North America - so please just use them!

The set decorators, music, lighting and locations - plus the parts of the father and the librarian (both fighting against a poor script) - deserve far more stars, but the two leads are so mismatched that even they don't look like they're enjoying it, so 1 star it is.

And don't get me started with what happens at the end of the movie in the middle of the road. Good grief.

When I watched this move a few months ago, on streaming, I erroneously blamed it on Hallmark. Now it' showing on Lifetime channel Therefore. I owe Hallmark my deepest apologies. Thus clarified, I still find this is, hands down, the worst royal TV movie ever. Save your intellect and watch a rerun of Gilligan' Island. That would be infinitely more entertaining.

So in spite of the reviews here the numeric ratings are in the 4-5 star range. That's generous. This is a terrible movie and that's coming from somebody that is actually fond of the hallmark royal themed movies. The lead actor may be ok in other roles but he is terrible in this--he floats in an out of a bad British accent. Of course the script is so bad that its hard to blame the actors but the result is that this thing is barely watchable. I made it through the whole thing but am a little shocked that I actually finished it.

There are lots of royal themed movies in the Hallmark vault. Try an alternative because this one is not worth you time.

This is a pure formula "Royal" movie where the prince maintains his anonymity through most of it. There is the antagonistic confrontation at the beginning. The anonymous prince helps with a Christmas festival. The queen is throwing tantrums, admittedly somewhat mild tantrums. There are so many other formulaic plot lines. There is also some wild rationalizing to work things out to the predictable outcome.

I haven't seen Lisa Durupt as a romantic lead, but in many supporting roles like best friend or sister. Marcus Rosner is a rom/com veteran, many of which with Hallmark. (This movie is Lifetime.) As another reviewer pointed out, Rosner vacillates back and forth into an English accent (obligatory for all Royal movies). I found this distracting. There was some chemistry but it wasn't great.

There is nothing to set this movie apart from the crowd. It won't be on my future viewing list.