5 burning questions we have about Netflix's 'A Christmas Prince'
In case Netflix hasn’t already suggested it for you, A Christmas Prince is an original holiday movie starring iZombie’s Rose McIver as Amber, an ambitious young editor at a tabloid who gets a huge first writing assignment because none of the reporters can be bothered to spend the two weeks before Christmas in the country of Aldovia waiting to see if misunderstood “playboy prince” Richard (Ben Lamb) will abdicate the throne or follow in his late father’s footsteps.
It has most of the tropes you’ve come to know and love in Hallmark’s princely Christmas originals: snowball fights that prove the royal is down-to-earth, a heroine who has only ridden a horse in Central Park before, a makeover that culminates in an entrance down a grand staircase, and a proposal in the street outside her blue-collar father’s establishment.
While A Christmas Prince comes with more holiday decorations than your average Hallmark flick, it also features a few more plot holes.
1. Why does the queen’s security suck?
After the prince’s press conference at the castle is canceled, not only is Amber able to sneak back into the castle through an open, unguarded door, but when a security person finally busts her taking photos, he fails to notice that she has a press pass around her neck. He hears her American accent and assumes that she’s Martha, the new tutor for Richard’s, sister, Princess Emily (Honor Kneafsey). Martha wasn’t supposed to arrive until after New Year’s, but hey, that’s OK, because no one at the castle has seen a photo of the real Martha during a background check or anything, apparently.
At whatever cocktail party Emily invites “Martha” to attend, no one notices her sneaking photos? Pretty sure she’d stand out in that dress-and-turtleneck ensemble.
2. Why would the queen have invited Baroness Sophia (Emma Louise Saunders) to spend the holiday at the castle?
We find out later that Richard had genuinely cared for Sophia once, but she sold a story to a tabloid. The queen would not have been made aware of that? If we’re to assume that social-climber Sophia, offscreen, had convinced the queen that she’d been young and stupid and had changed, it does the character of the queen an unfortunate disservice.
3. Why wouldn’t Amber have been more protective of HER PASSPORT? OK, so maybe you think locking your bedroom door is enough, but when you’re fooling THE ROYAL FAMILY, I’d think you’d go the extra mile and, like, not leave your purse with your identification on your bed while you’re out? And let’s talk about those secret documents proving Richard is adopted and not of the royal family’s bloodline. You’d probably want to hide those too, especially before you answered a knock at your bedroom door. And also maybe not tell your co-workers — the ones who told you, “Where there’s a tiara, there’s dirt — trust me”) — about them while you’re still deciding whether or not you want to use them.
4. Where was Richard’s pillow? Yes, Richard has the red carpet when he kneels during his first attempt at a coronation ceremony at the Christmas Eve Ball, but it wouldn’t offer much support…
…and doesn’t that pillow that Cousin Simon (Theo Devaney) gets to kneel on later look awfully official?
5. What was this guy’s backstory?
I thought for sure that he was the secret service agent who had been assigned to tail Amber all along (since the queen was SO protective of her daughter with spina bifida), posing as a weary passenger at the airport so that he could then overhear Amber’s tearful confession of regret to her father. But no, he was just a guy sleeping prominently in this key scene.
A Christmas Prince is now streaming on Netflix.
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