RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE - Mark Reviews Movies

Red, White & Royal Blue, Amazon Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 10, 2023

It takes a while, but a sweet and somewhat thoughtful romance does eventually develop in Red, White & Royal Blue. The movie, based on Casey McQuiston's novel, never quite overcomes its gimmicky premise, which feels more like real-world political fan fiction than a story with actual stakes and characters who come across as real people, though.

The gimmick is at least kind of clever, even if the movie's first act is so goofy that such a description would seem like the last one to aim at this material. We meet Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), a college student with some big ambitions for the world of politics. He's also, by the way, the son of the current President of the United and a sitting congressman, so the expectations are pretty high for whatever he might want to do. At the moment, Alex is devising a campaign strategy that would flip his home state of Texas for the Democratic Party, where the political loyalties of his mother Ellen (Uma Thurman) and father Oscar (Clifton Collins Jr.) lie.

Before getting into all of this, though, the story, adapted by screenwriters Matthew López (who also directed) and Ted Malawer, throws Alex and us into the pomp of a royal wedding at Buckingham Palace. The eldest grandchild of the king has just wed, and Alex is there to represent the United States, along with his friend and the vice president's granddaughter Nora (Rachel Hilson). Of main interest to Alex is how the king's younger grandson Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), which seems a little on-the-nose in terms of a real-world connection (especially when we learn that a parent died when the children were young), will react to his presence.

The two have met only one other time, at a conference about climate change, and Alex has held a grudge since then for the cold shoulder offered by the Prince. Henry doesn't care much for Alex, either. The two start bickering at the party, and the only thing more awkwardly contrived and predictably staged than this antagonistic relationship and the ensuing, very public argument is the massive, expensive cake standing next to and over the pair as their fight becomes mildly physical. Often, the easy joke isn't the best—or even a particularly good—one, and sure enough, that's the case when that giant cake comes crashing down, causing an international controversy.

That leads to both families insisting that Alex and Henry participate in a press tour together, as a kind of charm offensive to show there isn't any bad blood between the two countries and their respective governments. Soon enough, the two become close friends, texting and calling each other at all hours and about all sorts of things, and with a midnight kiss at a New Year's Eve party on the lawn of the White House, Alex realizes that he and his former foe have a lot more in common than he could have imagined.

With all of the unnecessary comedic plot-heavy bloat out of the way, the movie relaxes into much more intimate tale—as much about the two characters talking about their lives and the challenges facing them, as young men saddled with high expectations to meet and standards to uphold, as their sneaking away to secluded rooms, lest the affair become known. Both Alex, who is bisexual but hasn't told his parents or made this fact a matter of public record, and Henry, whose monarch grandfather knows the prince is gay but insists he keep it to himself and hidden, dread that possibility, because they don't know what the revelation would do to their lives or those of their family members.

These obstacles, of course, are still a bit contrived, especially considering the levels of power and influence these two men are connected to, but despite that, there is something to the way these characters understand and acknowledge both the privilege and the difficulties of their respective stations in life. If Alex and Henry come across as petty and slightly dull at the start, their conversations show just how intelligent they are. That, obviously, makes the entire first act feel even more ridiculous and artificial, leaving us to imagine how much more sincere and complex this relationship might have been with a bit more attention paid to it from the very beginning.

Instead, the filmmakers have set up a story at conflict with itself—between the various, external conflicts that keep these two characters apart and the notion of simply letting the two exist as individuals and as a couple. The movie's strengths undeniably reside in those latter scenes, as Alex and Henry gradually reveal themselves, their dreams, and their fears to each other and, of course, to us.

Unfortunately, Red, White & Royal Blue doesn't trust that potential strength, relying far too much on those external obstacles—ones that, by the end, turn out not to be actual issues or are so easily resolved that they probably didn't matter in the first place. There's a better, more believable story here, but the movie's central gimmick gets in the way of it.

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