Red, White & Royal Blue is a winning adaptation of the much-loved book
The rom-com adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s bestseller Red, White & Royal Blue has been so eagerly anticipated that each morsel of the film Prime Video shared ahead of its release soaked through social media in supercut edits.
Those teasers promised a splashy premise, in which the son of the US President Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) and Britain’s Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) fall first into a post-box-size wedding cake and then for each other.
Directed by Matthew López, Red, White & Royal Blue sees charismatic Alex and frosty Henry land in hot water after said sponge tumble, which is dubbed a "Cake Catastrophe" by the tabloid press and covered with a breathlessness normally reserved for daytime TV goings-on.
A PR campaign to patch up the Love Actually-honoured UK/US "special relationship" unfolds and the bitter animosity between the pair – chalked up as having no clear source in particular – begins to thaw and blossom into a steamy love affair.
Naturally, this has geopolitical consequences for the pair's inner circles, which include Uma Thurman with a slightly dodgy Texan accent as POTUS, a late scene-stealing turn from Stephen Fry as the British monarch and Sex/Life star Sarah Shahi as a quippy handler.
After a New Year's Eve kiss, Alex and Henry are tasked with keeping their love affair a secret as they attend everything from a charity polo match to a soiree honouring the Prime Minister (Sharon D Clarke). Both the President and the Prime Minister are notably played by women, so this may be Barbie Land we have stumbled into.
Red, White & Royal Blue hits a sweet spot: it's a frothy, feel-good romcom which leaves believability at the palace gates, plunging headfirst into the salacious waters of royal intrigue and political gossip with a sweet romance at its heart.
There's enough erotic titillation to merit an R rating – although much of this is served up in the raunchy dialogue and droll B-roll of tall, erect state buildings at certain moments. Ahem.
It's also jam-packed with enough romance tropes to muster that fuzzy and familiar feeling of any pleasingly formulaic on-screen love affair. There's 'enemies to lovers', 'opposites attract', 'forbidden romance', '(s)he fell first but he fell harder' and a pivotal pen-pals interlude.
It's when Alex and Henry are growing closer across the divide of an ocean that the filmmaking choices comes to life, as the two feverishly exchange messages and share When Harry Met Sally-esque phone conversations before bed, tussling over real issues like their respective heights.
Social media is brilliantly incorporated into these sequences, with cultural references like the perennially viral Pop Crave making an appearance, on the platform still known as Twitter when the film was made.
There are certain tonal woes, as we occasionally get bogged down in the dull minutiae of Claremont’s 2020 election run, while concerns over the royal family's reputation bring on po-faced lines like Henry's "centuries of history bearing down on my shoulders".
The chief strength of Red, White & Royal Blue is The Kissing Booth's Taylor Zakhar Perez, whose charming performance is helped by the fact he is gifted the lion's share of the best lines and manages to teeter on the edge of being cocky without becoming smug.
Heartfelt yet restrained Henry is a tougher prospect, but Nicholas Galitzine manages to lend the role enough gravitas to pull off dialogue like "I don't think I've ever owned a key in my entire life" – his half of the tale simultaneously embraces and takes a pop at the British establishment.
In recent years, Netflix has been hailed as the last pillar propping up the romcom, a genre largely ignored by the franchise-dominated box office since its noughties heyday. Yet after optimistic early efforts on the platform like Set It Up and To All the Boys I've Loved Before, the recent glut of Netflix romcoms like Holidate or Your Place or Mine has significantly lowered the bar, despite the starry names attached.
Prime Video's entrant, which is undoubtedly the buzziest rom-com of the summer, paves a confident path for the genre away from Netflix's increasingly bland efforts. All the TikTokers who have been picking apart those early snippets of the film will certainly not be disappointed.
Red, White & Royal Blue is now available to watch on Prime Video.
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