6.9 stars.
A woman (D'Orsay) works for a tabloid and poses a catchy story for the editor: to find the long absent prince of a European country and make a great headline for the "TMZ" wannabe magazine. So she goes to Europe to find this prince (Kemp) whose been absent for years. Rumor has it he doesn't like to make public appearances, so people have actually forgotten what he looks like. Kemp always plays a prince of some country near England with his English accent and all. D'Orsay is the usual Hallmark version of the American woman who falls for the prince. But this time there is a twist and it is interesting, but it doesn't change the formula enough to make this an original film.
Nothing is different with this movie, it's the same blueprint and that is disappointing. We've seen one too many at this point, no really, this is the last straw. Does this mean I will cease further Hallmark viewing? No, but I am not happy that I have to sift through this drudgery still. I thought Christmas 2023 would usher in some changes, but they still insert the same stuff in too large a proportion.
Enough of the interrupted kiss, and the dead parents. I've had it with people eating pancakes and doughnuts for breakfast, cookies, cakes, and candy canes for lunch, and gingerbread, pie, ice cream, more cookies and cakes for dinner. Then there are the midnight snacks of more cookies with milk. Sometimes they have ice cream, which is always totally melted by the way. Instead of 8 glasses of water a day, it's 6 glasses of cocoa and 2 glasses of coffee. Be gone with the best friend who always assumes the lead character is "in love" with some random person of the opposite sex. You know, when the main character says something like: "Me and Bobby were riding on a bus and Bobby says..." and the best friend replies: "Oh, so you talked with a man, I bet he was cute". And the lead shrugs and acts all coy... ENOUGH! Or how about when the Mom tells the daughter, "You are my favorite daughter" and you know what the response will be: "Mom, you know I'm your only daughter". I know that's how Hallmark inserts tidbits of information so we get a better picture of who is who and what is what. And back to the food, sometimes it's pizza for dinner, always pizza, except for one meal only, the actual Christmas meal is a turkey or ham and mashed potatoes etc. And what about in the city when the romance has begun, what do the leads always eat when they get hungry on the main street? Hotdogs. Really? Nobody eats hot dogs and looks like that. In all my years working for a government agency rarely did anyone ever eat hot dogs. Only children eat hot dogs. Adults eat hamburgers, it's the way we do stuff in America. And so no wonder people die over the holidays, America is obese, heart disease is rampant. They are modeling their lives after these Hallmark characters. You know that none of these actors actually eat this stuff. I guarantee they chew it for a scene and as soon as the director says "cut" it's spit into the garbage.
I have a friend who has personally boycotted all Hallmark movies and products, because she says it's all just a Christmas scam. They are a holiday company, selling the holidays, the whole season of Christmas is a Hallmark money making machine, she says. I'm convinced she's correct.
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