A Royal Queens Christmas
Starring Megan Park, Julian Morris, Michael Hanrahan, Nicola Correia-Damude
Directed by Lee Friedlander
While it's perfectly fine to broaden your horizons when it comes to Hallmark Christmas movies and watch a movie based around time travel, celebrating diversity, and the like, sometimes you just want to sit back with a generic, mediocre love story between a prince who wants to keep his prince-hood a secret and the nice, sweet, mild-mannered girl-next-door who just needs someone to play the piano at a children's Christmas concert. That's "A Royal Queens Christmas," a film that fits perfectly in the not-so-tempered mosaic of secret royalty Christmas love stories that Hallmark is best known for. While it checks off everything you'd expect, it also doesn't stand itself apart from the others, resulting in you possibly mixing up the stories of other movies like this in your head, but don't worry - they all end up the same.
DeeDee (Megan Park) lives in Queens and is planning on putting on the traditional children's Christmas choir concert, but her father injured his hand and can't play the piano. Meanwhile, Prince Colin (Julian Morris) is in New York City for a Royal Family event and sneaks away to play the piano, which is one of his inner passions that the Royal Family wants to keep hidden. DeeDee hears Colin play at the hotel, and enlists his help to play for her concert. As the two get to know one another, feelings develop, but Colin keeps his Prince-hood from her, and when it all comes to a head, it could spell doom for the fairy tale couple.
Hallmark Channel does its best work when it tells an impossible love story for Christmas, and of course "A Royal Queens Christmas" is one such impossible tale - who would imagine a Prince of royal birth would allow himself to shed the title and settle for a life of domesticated bliss where he makes snowmen and plays piano for a local school choir concert? Also, how did he manage to avoid detection with the Internet being around and anyone noticing who he was? It's like if Prince Harry would one day appear in a Queens high school saying his name was Harry and he just wanted to play piano and no one was the wiser. Still, again, this is Hallmark, so suspension of belief is commonplace.
The performances are about on-par with other Hallmark movies, especially that of DeeDee, played by Megan Park. Even though she grew up in Queens and all her family members and friends speak with a Queens accent (poorly, I might add), she doesn't have any shred of accent in her voice, which I guess is a good thing because if it was as bad as the supporting characters around her, you'd never understand a word she says. Julian Morris exudes royalty as Colin, who has the eternal struggle of being the heir-apparent to the throne but secretly wants to be in a rock and roll band or something and get married to the only non-Queens-accent speaking girl in town.
The story remains generic and formulaic as anything they've put out, but does something a little different by him being revealed a little past the halfway point (spoilers, sorry, I know no one expected that to happen), and to my shock there was still like forty five minutes left in the story. This is where it dragged on endlessly as DeeDee was angry that Colin didn't tell her he was a prince and she didn't want anything to do with him - but we all know she still did - and acted like he told her he was cheating on her with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders or something. There's worse secrets to be told, and if I was in her shoes, I wouldn't be at all upset but wonder: "since you're a Prince, and you love me, will that make me a Princess? And if so, would I have servants and would they curtsy meekly as I walk by?" Instead, she almost loses him because she's not that bright to realize that she got the golden goose of relationships.
In terms of Hallmark Christmas movies, "A Royal Queens Christmas" is as generic as they come, providing lackluster performances and a typical story that drags on too long near the end, culminating in an all-too-generic conclusion.
The Score: D+
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