Netflix Christmas movies are a true guilty pleasure of mine. And more specifically, those movies that make up the Netflix Extended Cinematic Extended Cinematic Christmas Universe (NECCU). Quick aside, I wrote last year about how those movies intersect with each other. It’s wild stuff.
Sadly, there is no fourth Christmas Prince, and none yet announced, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for that. But thankfully, Netflix was still able to add to their extended universe with the third entry in the Vanessa Hudgens-starring The Princess Switch series.
While The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star furthers this particular series, it sadly does nothing to enhance the extended universe. Even worse, unless I missed something, there is only one outright reference to the other movies. We’ll get there eventually, but it’s incredibly short and jarring and random and weird and somehow still great.
If this is your first foray into the Princess Switch series, here’s a quick rundown of what happened in the first two movies (spoilers, but whatever, these are movies are obvious and can’t really be spoiled; it’s part of their charm).
Let’s not waste time recapping the first two movies. If you really need to know, here the Wikipedia pages for The Princess Switch and The Princess Switch: Switched Again. But just to lay a little bit of a foundation, we will run down the three Hudgi:
Stacy: originally a baker from Chicago; now Princess of Belgravia and married to Prince Edward
Margaret: Queen of Montenaro; married to Kevin (Stacy’s longtime friend and business partner) and step-mother to Olivia
Fiona: Margaret’s cousin
With the preamble out of the way, let’s get to it! (and yes, spoilers)
What’s in a name?
The nonsense starts before the first frame of the movie. Romancing the Star? What are we even doing here? Yes, the big MacGuffin is a star, but nobody is trying to woo it. The obvious reference is to Romancing the Stone, the 1984 Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner adventure rom-com, a fun enough movie in its own right. While there are some thin similarities between the two movies, how many people watching Romancing the Star are going to get that reference? Romancing the Stone came out several years before I was born, and I’m for sure several years old than the target audience here.
Sure hope this priceless, sacred relic isn’t immediately stolen
So The Princess Switch 3 opens with the Vatican (yes, that Vatican) delivering a sacred relic, the Star of Peace, said to have once been owned by St. Nicholas. As expected, it’s under heavy guard, with delivery handled by renowned Vatican Security company, VATISEC.
I LOVE that a continuing theme in these movies is things being given terrible names (as first introduced in the first Christmas Prince movie). The Star will be kept in the palace vault, until it’s adorned atop a Christmas tree and the Christmas Eve tree-lighting ceremony.
But before the Star can get settled into its new digs, it’s stolen, literally 6 minutes into the movie. I love it. Get the plot moving. No need for pointless filler. When Margaret and Stacy are speaking with the police, the Inspector says this phrase, when Margaret asks her to promise to retrieve the Star in time for the ceremony:
Give me more of this. I need more. There are maybe one or two other examples of this, and it would be simply amazing if this became a running gag. Just coming up with ridiculous phrases that make no sense, delivered in such a way to make them seem like these normal, everyday phrases everyone uses.
Romancing The Fast And Furious Ocean: The Christmas Caper
The first two Princess Switches are definitively romantic comedies. And while those themes and storylines are still plentiful here, this is the point it delves into a full-on heist movie. And I could not be more on board. I love heist movies. It’s my favorite genre. So yeah, I’m all for this group of supremely unqualified people to take on the job after believing the police to be incompetent.
When the group – Margaret & Kevin and Stacy & Edward – Stacy comes up with this beautiful nugget:
“If the police don’t have any leads, then it’s up to us to come up with something they don’t have.”
So who do they turn to, but Lady Fiona Pembrooke, currently serving out a community service sentence at the (conveniently) nearby St. Michael’s Convent and Orphanage.
However, there is one thing that I simply can’t overlook here. I’m still waiting for a legit crossover between this series and Christmas Prince. And this could have been a perfect opportunity. Our dear Queen Amber first went to Aldovia as a journalist, and over the course of three movies, we saw her blossom into an investigative journalist. Sure, she’s terrible at it, maybe the worst we’ve ever seen put to screen (though the movies would have you believe otherwise). But still. Such an easy way to keep the universe building alive. And fine, Netflix doesn’t want to Avengers: Endgame it just yet. But what’s stopping the characters from at least giving her a call? Give us a quick scene with Amber. That’s not too much to ask, right? But back to Fiona.
Mother Superior agrees wot let Fiona go to the palace to assist the Queen, but she only has a couple of days. She must return to the orphanage by December 26, as she has a disciplinary hearing. There’s no way this becomes a problem later on. Nope, no chance at all.
Fiona already has been in touch with “an associate,” who lives in a 13 year old’s fantasy home apparently.
The associate is Peter, Fiona’s ex-boyfriend and a disgraced ex-Interpol agent (incredible). And not only has he already been hard at work on the case, he’s already figured out who stole the Star. It’s been, what, 24 hours since it went missing? Does time even exist in this universe? I’m inclined to think not.
This is where these movies really shine. The drug used on the guards comes from one single Asian distributor…except for one “disreputable pharmacist in Geneva.” And wouldn’t you know it, he finds evidence of a sale being made by an employee of billionaire hotel tycoon, Hunter Cunard, who also has a past history with Fiona. How convenient this all is. Apparently Cunard has a habit of stealing priceless artifacts for his own personal collection. The Night Fox of the Princess Switch universe, if you will.
And with this one single piece of evidence, the group is now 100% convinced Hunter is responsible for the theft. And of course he is, because this is the Princess Switch world. They’re not concerned with the ins and outs of a criminal investigation, or obtaining, you know, even one iota of actual proof. But no matter, now that they know who has the Star, they can go to the police, right?
Wrong. Rather than doing that (because Hunter “has friends everywhere”), they plan a heist to steal the Star back from Hunter. What kind of country is Montenaro that the royal family can’t use the police? And if they truly can’t trust the police, they have literally no other resources at their disposal? Not exactly a beacon of trust here.
Anyway, they need to get Fiona an invite t o Hunter’s annual Christmas party. All they have to do is arrange a chance meeting between the two. Because Hunter was quite enamored with Fiona, once they meet, scoring an invite should be a given. And this is where we get our second made up phrase, though this one is actually great. Referring to her and Hunter’s past relationship, Fiona says:
“Had a bit of a steamy” should replace “hooked up” now and forever.
Fiona gets the invite so now the team has to practice for the heist. And of course Peter has a fully detailed 3-D model of Hunter’s security vault. And he also has a TEST LASER SECURITY SYSTEM? THAT CAN MODEL THE SAME SETUP AS HUNTER’S?
Unfortunately, Reggie gets hurt during practice. Their only remaining hope is for Fiona to take his place, but that means…YES! Let’s get to those switches! It’s about time! While Fiona works with Peter to steal the Star back, Queen Margaret will pretend to Fiona, to keep Hunter busy. But wait, there’s more!
Mother Superior calls to inform Queen Margaret that Fiona’s disciplinary hearing has been moved up to *gasp* the same night as the heist! No way. Who could have seen this coming? (Everyone. Everyone saw this coming). Luckily they have a third lookalike hanging out, waiting for something to do. Stacy decides to go to the hearing as Fiona, with Edward in tow as a character witness. The hearing goes swimmingly and, despite Stacy’s efforts to prolong Fiona’s sentence, the committee decides to commute the rest of it. A Christmas miracle!
At the party is where we get our one and only concrete reference to the Christmas Prince series. And it was completely pointless.
If that’s all we’re going to get, why even bother at all?
But now for the actual heist. And credit where credit is due. There’s actually a very cleverly edited scene, switching back and forth between Margaret-as-Fiona dancing the tango with Hunter and Fiona and Peter navigating their way through the laser security. It’s not something I would have at all expected one of these movies to be able to pull off. But it’s a legitimately well-crafted sequence.
Fiona and Peter steal the Star, but are discovered by security. They split up, with Peter giving Fiona the bag with the Star, and he stays behind to cause a diversion, allowing the rest of the crew to escape.
However – and see if you can keep up here because this was a wild twist no movie has ever done before – back at the royal palace, they discover Peter gave Fiona a decoy bag. What, no way. Instead of the Star, which looks like this
Fiona had been carrying a basketball around this entire time. A basketball. You know, the round, smooth thing that would feel nothing like this incredibly pointed, jagged Star. Yeah sure, you could argue adrenaline or some nonsense, but still. The two aren’t even close. And even more, this means Peter had been carrying around a basketball with him the entire time, right? How could he have done that without Fiona noticing? Luckily, these movies aren’t concerned with important details like this.
Fiona receives a text from Peter telling her to meet him the following morning, at Manderston Academy, where they first met. Peter says he’ll give her the Star, but first Fiona has to meet “her” in the dining hall. The “her” in this case is Fiona’s mother, who she’s distanced herself from, because she always left Fiona at the Academy during Christmas time.
To no one’s surprise, Fiona and her mother make up, but there is was one MASSIVE miss on the movie’s part here. How do you not put Vanessa Hudgens in old-person (or at least older person) makeup and have her play the part of Fiona’s mom? Just like with Queen Amber, an easy decision that they completely dropped the ball on.
So the Star of Peace gets returned just in time, with no one from the Vatican being any the wiser. Fooling and being dishonest with the Vatican, gotta admire the bold chops on that one.
Peter, obviously, shows up at the Montenaro Christmas festival. He and Fiona sort everything out, and we get a lovely/kind of odd or creepy montage of each Vanessa Hudgens kissing their respective partners.
And that’s that. The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star is in the books. And as I hoped and expected, I loved it. There’s so much wrong with it, like all these movies, but that’s the appeal. They take the easy way out on almost every single choice. The plots are paper-thin, stories and motivations are as unclear as often as they make sense. It’s great.
And Vanessa Hudgens needs a specific shout-out. These movies don’t have a chance at working if she’s not fully committed. And she is, 1000%. She is an icon for this, as far as I’m concerned. Fiona especially is so over-the-top, her introduction in the sequel is probably the best thing this series has done.
There is one unforgivable offense, though, that the movie made. Well, kind of two, but they go hand in hand. First, there was no new Vanessa Hudgens character. And I’m not talking about having her play her mom; that would have just been a fun addition. I’m talking about another lookalike. And they had the easiest way ever to introduce her.
The real villain should absolutely have been another Vanessa Hudgens! How amazing would that have been! Then in the fourth installment, part of the story can be about bringing this new one over to their side, like they did with Fiona. If they’re going all Fast and the Furious on us now, that’s exactly what those movies do too. Might as well keep copying from the playbook.
Okay, I’ve written entirely too many words about this movie. Time to sign off. Until next year!
Score: 40/100 (but score is largely irrelevant for these kinds of movies; they succeed entirely in spite of themselves)
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