A surprisingly great Christmas movie from Netflix.

This post for A Christmas Prince contains spoilers.

Last year’s A Christmas Prince (2017, directed by Alex Zamm) seems to be a better Christmas movie to watch as compared to the recent Netflix releases such as The Princess Switch. This Netflix holiday movie follows Amber Moore (Rose McIver) who is assigned to cover the coronation in the fictional country Aldovia, where Prince Richard (Ben Lamb) is set to take his late father’s place as the King.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of holiday movies because they are predictable, cheesy, and kind of a waste of time. I only decided to watch A Christmas Prince because the sequel A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding drops this Friday (November 30) on Netflix.

I was surprised that this movie had a plot twist, which I did not expect—and that is the fact that the Prince is actually adopted and does not have any royal blood. I don’t recall watching any other holiday movies with a similar plot twist as A Christmas Prince, so I was certainly surprised when it was revealed that Prince Richard was adopted. There are of course certain foolish scenes in this movie, but I think the production value of it is pretty high and definitely better than The Princess Switch.

I have always liked McIver as an actress, and I admire the work that she does on the CW TV series iZombie. I think she is one of those rare foreign actors (she’s from New Zealand) who does a brilliant American accent. But her performance here doesn’t really showcase her range as an actor because it’s a fairly conventional movie character that one might have seen in other cliché movies.

Lamb as Prince Richard was convincing, and I believe a large part for that is due to his British accent. I mean anyone with a posh British accent can probably get away with playing the role of a royal character.

A Christmas Prince isn’t necessarily a must-see movie, but I think it’s worth checking out if you are interested in watching the sequel; or perhaps, you could just read this really thorough recap on Vulture to save you some time.

Rating: 3/5