Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, we all create our own seasonal traditions and customs. Watching a Home Alone movie, indulging in your favourite, seasonally appropriate food/drink/sweater or, as in in a recent years, experiencing one of the entries in Netflix’s annual deluge of Christmas adjacent rom-coms. The Princess Switch movies occupy a nook within a niche, with the latest now annual entry series, the The Princess Switch 3 Romancing the Star (NOT the stone) arriving on Netflix last week.
Starring Vanessa Hudgens as Chicagoan turned princess of Belgravia, Stacy Denovo Wyndhgam, Vanessa Hudgens as Queen Margaret Delacourt of Monatanaro, and Vanessa Hudgens as Margaret’s spoilt cousin Fiona Pembroke (there are other people in these movies but we’ll get to that later), the trilogy updates The Prince and the Pauper for the modern age, as the various Vanessas swap places for… reasons… and Chrimbo related hijinks inevitably ensue.
Here are 10 questions I had while watching The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star.
1. What’s With All the Christmas Trees!?
Okay, so this has been a question since the very first Princess Switch, but why on earth are there so many Christmas trees in every room in the palace in Monatanaro??? I know this is supposed to inspire Christmas cheer but there are at least two Christmas trees in the background of every interior shot in the movie! At one point, Stacy and Margaret have a discussion with their respective husbands, Kevin (Nick Sagar) and Edward (Sam Palladio), and they are surrounded by at least FIVE Christmas trees! Are Christmas trees ridiculously abundant in Monatanaro? Are they desperately trying to get rid of them? Are they a threat? Are there secret service agents hiding in them? What’s the deal?
2. How Did Fiona Get off Jail Time For KIDNAPPING A PRINCESS AND IMPERSONATING A QUEEN ON HER CORONATION DAY???
If you haven’t been following the series, in the second entry, The Princess Switch: Switched Again, Stacey was kidnapped by Fiona, who thought she was Margaret, so that Fiona could take over as Queen for a few days and buff up her impoverished bank account. When caught, Fiona revealed that she’d been assisted by royal aide Antonio (Lachlan Nieboer). Antonio was arrested and thrown into the dungeon for good measure while Fiona… well, The Princess Switch 3 reveals she’s been doing community service. A sentence she’s able to get out of pretty quickly once the queen needs her help.
What about Antonio? He’s probably still rotting in the dungeon.
Even in our fluffy Netflix Christmas rom-coms we can’t escape the perils of royal privilege and entitlement!
3. Why Does Prince Edward, Look Like He’s Been CGI’d Into Every Scene?
Bizarrely for a movie that necessitates the use of CGI, just to put three of its main characters on screen at the same time, and makes it look convincing, why does Sam Palladio’s Prince Edward look like he’s been photoshopped into every frame? Even in scenes where he is very clearly physically interacting with the other actors, i.e. he had to be there in the room when it happened, he still looks like he’s beaming in from a green screen somewhere?
4. How Is This the Same Vanessa Hudgens as in Tick, Tick… Boom!?
Who are we to suggest anyone turn their nose up at a guaranteed paycheck for at least three years in a row, but how is this actress with the goofy accents the same one delivering sultry songstress vibes in Netflix’s adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s musical? Where’s the actress who had all of us at Goggler convinced that she was going to have a torrid fling with Andrew Garfield’s Larson, purely based on the looks she was giving him?
5. It’s Been 3 Movies Already, Who the Hell Is Robin Soans’ “Mysterious Stranger?”
Billed as “The Kindly Man” in the first movie (sounds like a low budget horror movie) and “Elf Man” in the second and third, Robin Soans’ character turns up in each entry in the franchise to assist the Hudgenses in some manner. He convinced a reluctant Stacey to go to Belgravia in the first movie, kicking the whole franchise off. When he later appears in Belgravia, I had just assumed he was a twin of the character from the U.S., but apparently not? In this exciting instalment “The Kindly Man”… works as a valet at Hunter Cunard’s party?
Is he an elf? Is he the spirit of Christmas? Is he somehow nudging events to some grand design putting things right which once went wrong? People need to know!
6. Why Are There No New Lookalikes!?
Look, the showrunners established their own rules for this franchise. The first movie introduced us to two Vanessa Hudgenses, the second movie, three. I fully expected another Hudgens to be decanted from the plot vaults for the third movie. Instead we get this ho-hum caper and tepid romance between Fiona and Remy Hii’s Peter Maxwell.
Keep the lookalikes coming! Or give us a lookalike for one of the other characters. Like… um… Edward! Or let’s just say Mrs. Donatelli (Suanne Braun). Yeah! A villainous Mrs. Donatelli!
That could totally work!
7. Is It Just Me or Does Remy Hii Give Off Strong Vibes of Bruce Wayne From Batman: The Animated Series in This?
Seriously, look at how the man wears a dapper scarf and tux combo. He looks just like Bruce Wayne. Actually, scratch that, is Hii playing Batman in this? Sure, he lives in a castle rather than a manor, but he has at least one manservant (Alfred?) and his man/bat-cave may have half a basketball court in it, but it also has a legit crime computer and what looks like a full laboratory!
8. Why Is Fiona So… Limber?
We can buy the idea of a spoilt heiress spending enough time in yoga and dance classes to be able to negotiate your standard “Entrapment style laser grid,” but what about that backflip in the end? She was a down on her luck socialite that resorted to crime, not a master thief.
Or was she? Where’s that movie?
9. Why (WHY!) Did They Bring Back Reggie and Mindy!?
Fiona’s unfunny partners in crime were annoying in the previous movie and remain so. Why would anyone, let alone a “security expert” like Batma- ahem, “Peter Maxwell,” trust these two fools to do anything. They are unfunny and just take time away from the true stars of the show – Mrs. Donatelli and Frank (Mark Fleischmann)!
10. Why Is Amanda Donohoe in This?
I love Amanda Donohoe and she deserves better than this! Even when she’s revealed as Fiona’s distant mother (I told you there’d be spoilers), her big reconciliation scenes come off flat and worse, they go on forever! I know it’s been a while since they’ve talked, and there are a lot of issues between them, but they stand around like they are just padding out the run time!
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