Schlock-Mas: Day Two

A PRINCESS FOR CHRISTMAS

A woman and her niece and nephew spend Christmas with a wealthy duke, the children's grandfather.

Jules Daly (Katie McGrath, the actress who played that poor woman who suffered the overwrought multiple-dinosaur death all because she didn't want to be saddled with watching some stranger's kids in Jurassic World) is a harried young woman who works part-time in a weirdly empty antique shop, and is struggling to raise her nephew Milo and niece Maddie in the wake of their parents' tragic death last Christmas. Milo's a bit of a kleptomaniac with a hot temper who can't help but get into trouble, and Maddie just needs constant supervision, otherwise she unwittingly wrecks any room in which she finds herself alone. So they're a bit of a handful.

Just a week until Christmas and with the anniversary of the tragic deaths of her sister and brother-in-law looming, Jules loses her job and finds herself at a crossroads in her life. Luckily for her, a dapper gentleman's gentleman named Paisley Winterbottom (seriously, that's his name) drops by to invite Milo and Maddie to visit their estranged uncle (Roger Moore), the duke of some made-up European nation called Castlebury, for the holidays. And Jules can tag along, being their legal guardian, and all.

See, Jules' brother-in-law was in fact the duke's first-born son, and when he deigned to marry an American commoner some years ago, his haughty father disowned the young man and they never reconciled before his untimely death. Since he's getting up there in years, Duke Edward has decided he would like to get to know his grandchildren before he shuffles off this mortal coil, hence the invitation. Of course the kids want to spend their winter holiday in some strange old dude's creepy castle, because watching ten thousand horror movies has taught me that that's always a good decision. But Jules is more wary since she remembers all the bad blood between Duke Edward and his late son.

But for the sake of the children, she relents, and it's not long before they're all whisked away to picturesque Castlebury, a place where it actually snows! There's snow everywhere! Real snow! It's actually winter, too! The trees are bereft of leaves, the air is crisp and cold, and everybody wears a coat because they actually need to wear a coat! And the locations are gorgeous. Beautiful landscapes and palatial estates that appear as though they were pulled directly out of a storybook. A Princess For Christmas took excellent advantage of its Romanian locations, just like the cast and crew of the eerily similar Crown For Christmas, a film I reviewed two years ago, although A Princess For Christmas came first (released in 2011), and is much better than that movie.

And they're not that similar, I suppose. I mean, sure, the main romantic plot is essentially identical, but the details are different. Katie McGrath isn't some hired help who falls in love with a handsome young king. Unlike Danica McKellar's character in Crown For Christmas, Jules Daly is a blood relation to her young charges. And unlike the dreadful king of whatever that country's name was in Crown For Christmas, I actually remember Roger Moore's bitter, isolated Duke Edward. He's not just some hastily sketched together nothing of a character like that damned king. No, Duke Edward has depth.

Duke Edward is first introduced as a cold and dispassionate blueblood, a bit of a stereotype, but that's for good reason. He immediately comes to regret his decision to invite his grandchildren to Castlebury and initially distances himself from them, much to their dismay. And he even angrily forbids them from installing a Christmas Tree in the drafty old palace. But he eventually comes around when it's revealed that the only reason he's been so distant and callous is because the grandchildren are a constant reminder of his late son, and the wasted years of foolish resentment that he can never take back. Edward misses his son deeply, and he realizes that instead of seeing his grandchildren as a reminder of what he has lost, they're truly a reminder of what he has left. And that realization thaws his icy heart one evening as he joins his family to decorate a fresh-cut Christmas Tree.

Sure, maybe that comparison between the king in Crown For Christmas and the duke in A Princess For Christmas isn't apt, because the king was the love interest in the former film, while the duke is actually the father of the love interest in the latter. Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that Roger Moore and Katie McGrath were going to fall madly in love and bang in front of a roaring fireplace after the conclusion of this movie. That's a fucked up visual that nobody needs to imagine.

No, the duke's other, still-living son is the male romantic lead in this movie, and his name is Prince Ashton (Sam Heughan, before he hit international superstardom playing James Alexander Malcom MacKenzie Fraser on Outlander), and he's a prince while his father is a duke because that title was inherited from his late mother's side of the family. Prince Ashton is engaged to be enganged to be married to some dreadful harridan named Lady Arabella, and that sounds so much like the name of a malign witch of the wood that I don't see how this nightmare of an aristocratic stereotype hasn't yet been invited to live deliciously by Black Phillip himself.

But as soon as dashing Ashton gets one look at dishy Jules, he falls harder than that old lady Mrs. Deagle fell out of the sky after her malfunctioning motorized stairlift sent her careening through the winter sky in Gremlins. Huh. That's all pretty similar to Crown For Christmas, isn't it? But there's no scheming chancellor plotting behind the scenes to help discredit our heroine and steal the throne for himself in A Princess For Christmas, so there's that.

And did I mention that every member of the palace stuff just loves Jules and the kids? They're all big, big fans. Which... um, is also very, very similar to Crown For Christmas. Look, A Princess For Christmas came first, and did all of this shit better! Seriously, front to back, top to bottom, A Princess For Christmas is just the bee's knees, man.

The movie was directed with some real flair by Michael Damian, who is actually more known for his acting than his directing, having been a recurring character on The Young And The Restless for nearly twenty years. And the script, by Michael and his producing partner wife, Janeen Damian, is quite clever at times, with some pretty strong character beats and very well-timed moments of levity, mostly involving the eccentric staff of Castlebury Hall.

One of the best supporting characters is a stoic maid named Mrs. Birch, a humorless clod who despises merriment in any form. After Jules and the kids drag home a Christmas Tree from the nearby village and attempt to decorate it in the palace, Mrs. Birch orders them to take it down before Duke Edward sees the cursed evergreen and blows his elderly top. Jules bats her watery blue eyes and asks Mrs. Birch to remember what she felt like when she was a child, and to imagine waking up on Christmas morning without a festively decorated tree in the house.

Mrs. Birch has a complete breakdown right then and there, weeping and wailing while she pours her heart out to Jules, telling the young woman that she never had a good Christmas growing up and that the memories of all that profound disappointment have scarred her for life. One year, she literally received a lump of coal in her stocking... and she thinks she deserved it. After purging herself of all this baggage, Mrs. Birch jumps to her feet and, with a smile on her face, begins helping Jules and the kids decorate the tree. This scene is played almost entirely for laughs, and it works very well, indeed.

Perhaps the best dramatic moment in the film occurs almost immediately after this, and I'm talking about the aforementioned tree decorating scene. Edward storms in to see Jules, his son and grandchildren trimming the tree, and he starts lashing out at everybody, demanding that the tree be removed immediately. Little Maddie approaches the old man and hands him a particular ornament, one that Ashton claimed to be his father's personal favorite. Edward holds the ornament in his hand for a long moment, his eyes staring through the glimmering bauble into the distant past.

He tells his granddaughter how this ornament was one of a pair, given to him and his older brother by their father one Christmas. They each cherished their ornaments, but young Edward clumsily broke his own. Edward's brother gave the crying boy his own ornament to take its place, and somewhere down the years, he thought he had misplaced the ornament and lost it forever. With the treasured ornament returned to his hand, Edward has his epiphany and embraces the family he once carelessly shunned. Roger Moore makes you believe every moment of this scene, and it's an excellent showcase of his versatility as an actor, effortlessly flowing from cold and cruel to warm and kind in a matter of moments.

A close second in terms of strong dramatic scenes involves young Milo and Prince Ashton. There's a locked door in Castlebury Hall that arouses Milo's curiosity. He has no idea what's behind that door and nobody will tell him. Eventually his curiosity gets the better of him one night and he picks the lock, discovering the room beyond the locked door to be his late father's childhood bedroom, preserved just the way it was when he left home so many years ago. He ruminates over the framed photos and dusty trophies that line the shelves until Ashton appears in the doorway and tells the boy how much he looks like his father.

The pair sit and talk about the dear, departed Charles, and Milo confesses that he feels the memories of his father are slipping further away with each passing day, and that he's afraid he'll eventually forget even his father's loving face, but Ashton reminds the boy that he can never truly forget his father, because Charles is still alive in his heart, and will remain there forever. He then promises to leave the door to Charles' room unlocked moving forward, so Milo and Maddie can come and go as they please.

That's the beautiful thing about A Princess For Christmas. There's some excellent drama in this movie, better than the pablum found in 98% of these products, and it all feels earned. Late in the movie, after Jules' dress for the upcoming Christmas Ball is ruined, the staff all chip in to pay for a new dress that they surprise her with on the big night, and this doesn't feel forced at all. You believe these people really like Jules enough that they would all gather their meager resources and perform this kindness for her. And when Duke Edward finds out about this, he kindly offers to reimburse the staff for their expense, no questions asked. What a guy.

When Jules and Ashton dance at the Christmas Ball, jilted witch Arabella attempts to ruin Jules' chances with the dashing prince by revealing to all assembled that Jules lost her job back in Buffalo, New York and so she just naturally assumes that, like herself, Jules is also a gold digging harpy who is trying to bleed the royal family dry. Duke Edward tells Arabella to get lost, and when Arabella's hoity toity parents take umbrage at this insult, Edward immediately goes to bat for Jules, urging them both to hit the bricks as well, adding that the self-righteous Duchess of Belmont is "all fur coat and no knickers", which may not sound like much to us common folk, but to the aristocracy that's at least a level five burn.

So Jules marries Ashton, becoming A Princess For Christmas, and I must say, this movie was just a delight. I was engaged throughout, never drifting off or checking the time, which is high praise indeed. The performances were almost uniformly good, the crew seemed to make a real effort to give the production a little extra style and grace, and the script and characters all felt more substantial than most such fare. A Princess For Christmas just feels special.

And now, the TROPES!

Mommy's Dead - Hell, in this movie, mommy and daddy are dead!

Scrooged - Duke Edward does start out an elderly asshole who hates Christmas for reasons, and maybe his epiphany falls a little too early to qualify as a third act development, but I'm still counting it.

Royal Engagement - The movie's called A Princess For Christmas. 'Nuff said.

Slumming It - Sir Roger Moore was definitely a little too good for a Hallmark Channel original movie.

Assistant Chef Jen - That rapacious strumpet Arabella was just a little too good at being the absolute worst.

Five out of twelve. That sounds bad, but none of it really bothered me. Sure, the tropes were in the movie, but only the character of Arabella ever felt even a little out of place. So despite racking up five solid tropes on the scorecard, A Princess For Christmas is still highly recommended.

VERDICT: NICE