Schlock-Mas: Day Fifteen

A PRINCE FOR CHRISTMAS

A prince hides his identity as he travels to the U.S. on a quest to find true love.

No, A Prince For Christmas is in no way related to the film A Princess For Christmas, which I reviewed earlier this month. Honestly, this movie's plot has more in common with 1988's classic John Landis comedy Coming To America, starring Eddie Murphy in one (several, actually) of his best comedic roles of all time. It's the exact same basic plot, really.

In both films, our protagonist, the prince of some made-up foreign country where everybody still speaks perfect English, avoids an impending arranged marriage by fleeing to America in an effort to find somebody who actually loves him and not his title. Both our princes conceal their identities while they court the object of their affections because they're worried if the woman knows they're royalty that this knowledge will muddy the romantic waters, so to speak. In both films, our female lead is informed by a third party that their new foreign boyfriend is not who they claim to be, and that they are due to be married imminently in their homeland, so there's no way they could be truly romantically interested in a mere commoner. No, the prince was just sowing his royal oats, and that's as far as it goes.

Then true love conquers all in the film's climax, with the King and Queen of (insert country name here) calling off the arranged marriage in order for their son to follow his heart, which he does back to America and the woman he loves, who forgives their prince and agrees to spend the rest of her life with this handsome asshole because every little girl wants to be a princess. So as you can see, A Prince For Christmas and Coming To America are basically interchangeable.

Unless you actually want to watch an entertaining motion picture with a budget and talent and charisma to spare. If you don't give a shit about any of that unimportant stuff, then by all means, waste two hours of your life watching A Prince For Christmas.

Our story begins with Prince Duncan (some guy who was in something), the child of the King and Queen of some country that isn't Great Britain even though everybody's fucking British, sulking at the breakfast table because his parents have arranged for him to be married on Christmas Day to some gorgeous aristocrat that he just doesn't love. She's a nice enough lady, to be sure, but there's no spark between them, no romance. But his mother (Kelly LeBrock) has planned everything out to the finest detail, and she won't take no for an answer. Usually an arranged marriage is arranged for a reason, either for political alliances or to usurp the lands and titles of a rival family. Not in this case.

No, the Queen of Wherever just likes this young lady and wants her to be a part of their family, I guess. There's no good reason given for this marriage, and the Prince's parents married for love when they were young, so why his parents wouldn't give him the same opportunity is beyond me, but I guess there wouldn't be a story here if Duncan's mother hadn't arranged this marriage in the first place, which just paints her as an unreasonable woman who won't listen to her son's sincere pleading for a chance to find true love like she did when she was his age.

All this movie had to do was provide an explanation for the forced marriage beyond the Queen crossing her arms and telling her son to shut up, and I would have rolled with it. But this script couldn't even give me that much. One line of dialogue. But that was a bridge too far for A Prince For Christmas.

To be fair, Duncan's father, the King of Europe, is a little more sympathetic to his son's pleas, but he has learned in his long marriage that if the Queen is unhappy, then everybody is unhappy, so he pretty much just goes along with things because he's too afraid to rock the boat and make his very intimidating wife angry.

The King is played by Maxwell Caulfield, by the way. Back in 1982, Caulfield believed he was well on his way to achieving international superstardom with his role in the upcoming sure-to-be-smash hit Grease 2, even giving a very ill-conceived interview with New York Magazine where he basically came across as a dangerously conceited, egomaniacal jackass, which didn't do anything to aid his public perception. When Grease 2 flopped at the box office, it nearly killed Caulfield's career, and the man hasn't had a starring role in a major theatrical motion picture since, getting by in smaller supporting turns in larger films and finding more substantial roles in television and in the theatre. He's never been a bad actor, which is the real shame, because if he'd just been more sensible in his early career he really could have made a name for himself in Hollywood, instead of being dragged down by the twin anchors of an infamous flop like Grease 2 and his own massive ego.

Moving on, Duncan doesn't want anything to do with this arranged marriage thing, so his valet, fencing partner and best friend Geoffrey (Mark Lindsay Chapman, another talented British actor who has made a name for himself through a prodigious career as a supporting actor in television whose only appearances on the big screen in the past twenty years were a brief cameo in Titanic and the role of John Lennon in Chapter 27) helps him sneak out of the palace one night, so that he can travel to America and find his one true love. Now Duncan says he's going to New York City, but he's next seen wandering the snowy backroads of upstate New York, hopelessly lost in a cramped rental car. Nobody can be that lost. I mean think about it: this guy had to come to America in an airplane, right? That airplane would have landed in New York City, so how did he get so far away from his destination when he surely landed in his destination to begin with? This is fucking bananas, man.

Duncan ends up crashing his rental car on the outskirts of some dying nowhere town called Aurora, and he finds himself stranded there until he can catch the next train back to the big city. Looking for some local American cuisine in the town's only diner, he first crosses paths with Emma, the young woman who inherited the diner, as well as the guardianship of her teenager sister Alice, when their parents died in an automobile accident three years earlier. The family had just picked up their Christmas Tree when they hit a patch of ice and went off-road. The kids survived, but the parents weren't so lucky. So Emma's drowning in debt as she attempts to keep the family business afloat while raising Alice all alone. And she's just dumped her prick boyfriend Todd, who tells her she'll come crawling back before New Year's Day because she knows he's the only one who has the money (he owns a used car dealership and is just rolling in hundos) to bankroll Alice's impending college education. Sounds like true love to me. I can't believe Emma let that catch get away.

Emma is played by Viva Bianca, an Australian actress I remembered from her role as the devious Roman aristocrat Ilithyia in the Starz series Spartacus, which I enjoyed quite a lot when it aired. It was such a tragedy when the original actor who played the series lead, Andy Whitfield, died of cancer after the first season had been completed. He was replaced by Liam McIntyre for the second and third seasons of the show proper after the prequel season, Gods Of The Arena, concluded. McIntyre was a fine actor in his own right, but he just didn't have that same intensity of character that Whitfield embodied so perfectly in his portrayal of the legendary Spartacus. But McIntyre was in a thankless position, because he had to fill the shoes of a dead man, which is an impossible task.

Now if Liam McIntyre had been cast as Spartacus from the beginning, I doubt I would have been able to imagine anybody else in the role in retrospect, because he was that good, but he had no choice but to stand in Andy Whitfield's shadow when he agreed to take the part, and he acquitted himself nicely in the final analysis.

I only bring up this Spartacus thing because I missed the opening titles of A Prince For Christmas and didn't know Viva Bianca was in this movie, and I did not at all recognize her when she first appeared onscreen. I thought she looked vaguely familiar, so I looked up the movie on IMDB and was shocked to see her name in the cast list, because the woman in this movie did not remind me of the actress who played the deliciously arch villainess of Spartacus in the slightest.

I know the two roles are complete polar opposites, and the actress's flat American accent for the movie may have had something to do with it, but her performance was so lifeless that it left no impression on me. Bianca would chew scenery like crazy on the set of Spartacus, never allowing any of her co-stars to upstage her, but in A Prince For Christmas she almost fades into the landscape of most of her scenes, which really disappointed me. I know this kind of role isn't exactly showy, but Viva Bianca really didn't seem to be at all invested in her character or in the movie, and that's a bit of a problem considering she's the female lead.

But when Duncan, now calling himself Adam because he's traveling incognito, meets Emma, it's just love at first sight. He makes excuses to miss his train ride out of town the next day to stick around and get to know this intriguing American girl, and they have all sorts of wacky adventures together. They go snow sledding, they make snow angels, they stand around in the snow and laugh at nothing in particular, and when they're not outdoors, they mostly just sit by the fireplace and talk about how awesome snow is, and how much they miss being out in the snow, and that they should probably just put their coats on and go play in the snow for a while because there's nothing else to do in this dead-end town.

So what's it like in Aurora in the summertime, after all the snow melts? Does everybody just stand out in the heat, dripping sweat and cursing their existence?

Spending all this time in such a delightful small American town has opened Duncan's eyes to the joys of Christmas, which he never really had any time for while growing up as the inbred Prince of some shitty European country that nobody can find on a map. He's so enchanted by the people caroling in the streets and all the colorful lights adorning the warm houses with the festively decorated trees standing in the front windows, because his weirdo parents never even allowed a Christmas Tree in the royal palace. I have no idea why, because the movie never provides any sort of explanation for any of this behavior. Duncan's parents just hated Christmas, I guess.

But now that Duncan's had a taste of the most festive of holidays, he's become a Yuletide junkie who just can't get enough. He's also had a taste of that American love with Emma, and he's hopelessly addicted.

Unfortunately, local douche bag Todd has done a little research (he skimmed a tabloid at the supermarket) and has learned the mysterious European suitor's horrible secret, dropping the bomb on Emma after she gets home from a fairy tale date with "Adam". Learning that her new boyfriend is, in fact, a prince, and due to be married in a matter of days to some glamorous duchess or something, she confronts Duncan, who tries to tell her that he came to America because he was looking for something more substantial than...

Look, we all know how this ends. The Queen cancels the arranged wedding so that her son can pursue his true love, and our leads reconcile on Christmas Eve and prepare to spend the rest of their lives together. Mazel Tov.

A Prince For Christmas is a boring waste of time and money, and I wish I had never chosen to sit down and watch the fucking thing this morning. I almost fell asleep while watching this movie, and I wasn't even tired. My brain just tried to shut down because it didn't want to process anymore of this crap. There's nothing good to mention in A Prince For Christmas, because it all sucks. Maybe Kelly LeBrock and Maxwell Caulfield were okay in their roles, but they only have, like, three minutes of screen time in total, so they don't leave much of an impression. But I loved my boy Mark Lindsay Chapman, who deserves better than garbage like this. Unfortunately, both of our lead actors phoned in their performances, so I'm phoning in this review.

Royal Engagement - Another royal family from another bullshit country that just happens to populated entirely by British people. Yawn.

Small Town Salvation - Spending the holidays in Aurora introduced Duncan to the true joys of Christmas, and to his future bride-to-be.

Little White Lies - Duncan passes himself off as some random European tourist named "Adam" because he doesn't want anybody to know that he's some fancy fucking prince.

Assistant Chef Jen - Todd's just a cow-eyed cocksucker who thinks Emma should settle for his used car salesman version of love because he's got a few extra bucks and most of his teeth. He's never given a single moment that even attempts to humanize him in the slightest, and he exits the movie the same way he enters it: sneering at that dummy Emma who thinks she's too good to ride the Todd Rodd.

Mommy's Dead - I'm counting this one because when Emma's parents died, Emma had to take over as both mother and father for her kid sister Alice, sacrificing her own dreams to travel the world to stay in Aurora and ensure that Alice's well-being comes first.

VERDICT: WHAT DOES A DEATH RATTLE SOUND LIKE? THAT'S MY VERDICT.