"A Christmas Prince:" A Christmas Movie Recap (Part 2)

Oh hello! I am recapping Netflix's terrible original holiday movie "A Christmas Prince." I am doing so in two separate posts, because I value my sanity. This is Part 2, and you can read Part 1 over here. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

When we left her, Amber was flailing around in the woods, about to face certain death at the hands of this super cranky wolf!

Things are looking pretty dire out here in the woods but then OUT OF NOWHERE the prince shows up and calmly fires his antique hunting pistol into the air, shouting, "GO AWAY!" The wolf, clearly understanding his place in the royal hierarchy, quickly obeys.

Prince Richard helps Amber up and whisks her away to his father's hunting cabin, plies her with liquor and then asks why she was following him. She says she was "curious," and rather than asking for further explanation, the prince spills his guts about the last time he was here with the king. They got into a big fight because Richard told him he intended to abdicate the throne, and then left town the next day and never saw his father again. It's all very tortured and Amber is very moved by it, in the way that a serious journalist would be and totally not in the way of a person who is super crushing on another person while also drinking whiskey.

Totes profesh!

After a few moments of gazing lustily at the prince, Amber seemingly remembers that she's supposed to be a reporter and asks him why he doesn't want to be king. He says he can't even get beers with a lady without it being a "scandal," but that it was different with Sofia, because while they were dating she sold a story about him to a tabloid. (One wonders if, perhaps, she sold it to Beat Now (Now Beat?) magazine.) Amber basically tells him to shut up and stop worrying about what other people think, and to just figure out who he wants to be. Richard is stunned by this life-changing advice, perhaps because she follows it up with a bunch of compliments about how great he is. 

To thank her for this insight, he shows her a poem that the king wrote about the queen but never gave to her (Richard is planning to give it to her for Christmas, which seems like a very creative way to not have to shop for a queen who has everything). And then, lord help us, Richard reads it to Amber. My soul, or what's left of it, weeps softly at how awkward and forced this moment is.

Even Amber's like, "Whiskey, firelight and your dead dad's weird poetry, eh? We're really doing this?"

Also, the poem is shit. 

In case you are not fluent in "Dead King Handwriting," I have typed it out for you. Behold!

Frost asparkle in the fields
Twixt the frozen minarets
Winter's harvest, meager yields
Heavy burdens, the year's debts
But from a seed, an acorn's gift
Henceforth the truth will flow
Darkness such a secret bears
And a love far greater than blood

I don't think you need to be a poetry expert to understand that this does not read like a love poem or even a particularly happy piece of verse, but both Amber and the prince are gobsmacked by how amazing it is (the whiskey helps, I'm sure). He's pretty sure that it's a riddle of some sort, she just thinks it's "beautiful" and "mysterious." And then, all riled up by his dead father's weird secret thoughts, Richard goes to lay one on Amber.

Tragically, before their lips can touch, the horses start whinnying and Richard has to leave to go check on them. Amber uses this opportunity to fumble through the king's journals, dropping some under the desk where she finds this fucking brass lever!

She pulls it, of course, to reveal...a secret drawer thing with an envelope in it!

Most likely assuming it's more of the king's awesome poetry, Amber steals the folder and then waits until she's back at the palace to take a peek at the goods. Inside, she finds a bunch of paperwork, including some birth certificates and adoption paperwork that indicate that Prince Richard was adopted and thus is not next in the "male bloodline" of succession for the throne.

That adoption certificate is basically the certificate of authenticity for Michael Scott's Seyko watch, but less fancy.

Amber immediately skypes her unhelpful colleagues to tell them about her big scoop. She's pretty sure the prince doesn't know, she says, because he would have used it as an out a long time ago given his total lack of interest in being king. Her unhelpful colleagues are super excited that she finally has something interesting to tell them!

Their joy is short-lived, though, because Amber tells them she's not sure what to do with this information and forbids them to tell the editor-in-chief. Sassy male unhelpful coworker is particularly annoyed.

"BREAK THE STORY!" he proclaims.

Amber's all conflicted, though, because in addition to compromising her journalistic integrity by lying about her identity to get access to these people, she's also gotten emotionally attached to them and involved in their lives, and is growing a conscience about all of it at the worst possible time. "This is someone's life," she tells her unhelpful colleagues, seemingly unaware that this has actually been multiple people's real lives this entire time. The whole time, Amber!

Lady Sofia, meanwhile, is hella pissed because she saw Amber and the prince coming back from their whiskey-soaked stay at the hunting cabin. She cannot even believe that he's spending time with Amber "the peasant." She tells Richard he needs to get serious, then plants a totally unwanted kiss on him, conveniently just as Amber is skulking by.

When they break apart, Richard (who really didn't seem to mind this kiss all that much, tbh) tells Sofia to bug off because he knows she only likes him because he's about to be king.

Really, the first half of this movie was much more fun.

Back in her room Amber is still conflicted, but maybe slightly less conflicted now that she thinks Richard and Sofia are making out, but still kind of conflicted, so she calls her dad for advice, but gives him no details about the shady things she's been up to. She just wants to know if she should go through with her story if it might hurt someone who's already been through a lot (including, presumably, trusting someone who's been lying to him about her identity)?

"Look, I don't know anything about your job," her dad says, not realizing that HE REALLY, REALLY DOESN'T. "But you gotta listen to your heart, peanut."

Thanks for the help, pops, and the total lack of follow-up questions. I'm guessing Amber gets that insatiable reporter's curiosity from you.

Fresh on the heels of that amazing advice, the prince knocks on Amber's door and asks if he can take her for a walk. She's hesitant, on account of her newfound conscience and also because she just saw him necking with Sofia, but he asks super nicely and so she caves. Outside, she's tryna play it cool

...but within like two minutes she tells him that she saw him and Sofia and doesn't understand why he's outside with her now. The prince says that Sofia forced herself on him but he was totally uninterested, which by the way happens to him like ALL THE TIME, it's just a prince thing, you wouldn't understand. He says he hopes she'll come to the Christmas Eve ball to see his coronation, and she's juuuust about to tell him that he ain't no part of the bloodline, but then he lays a royal kiss smack on her face!

When they break apart he says, "What did you want to tell me?" but Amber, rendered speechless by the power of his princely tongue, says nary a word.

Meanwhile, Sofia, bastion of good breeding that she is, is busting into Amber's room using a bobbypin.

She and Simon sneak in. You can tell they are sneaking because of how they walk, all sneaky-like. 

They find all of Amber's dirt, including her passport with her real name and all of the adoption paperwork, in like two seconds, because she left it all sitting out in the open on the bed. This is exactly what you would do if you were trying to hide your identity and also the family secrets that you stole from the family you happen to be staying with. 

Sofia would never.

The next day, Richard dons his best confused-pimp attire to go visit his father's grave.

He apologizes for fighting with his dad the last time they were together and says that he'll accept the throne, but that he'll never measure up to the king. He does not apologize for his outfit, and that is a great travesty.

Amber's in her room deciding which of her truly terrible outfits will look best with the sneakers we all know she's going to wear to this black-tie ball.

Emily comes in and they have a heart-to-heart about how even though Amber's story is almost done and she'll be leaving soon, the two of them will always be besties. Then Emily presents her with this super fancy gift box!

Emily says it's a Christmas gift and also kind of a thank-you to Amber for teaching her that everything will be OK, even though the king is gone. I got pretty excited about this because I LOVE PRESENTS and Emily is rich af AND is the only one who knows Amber's real identity, so I figured there was going to be something really good in there. Maybe an expensive pen (Amber is a writer!) (I mean she's not, but whatever, it would be a good gift) or a fancy diamond necklace to wear to the ball that will help distract from Amber's dirty old sneakers.

I should have known better. If this movie has taught me nothing else, it's that we can't have nice things, and thus, it's a fucking Pandora bracelet.

This may be the most infuriating thing about this entire movie? EMILY. HONEY. You are literal royalty. You have unlimited funds at your disposal and ostensibly an entire basement room filled with fancy jewelry (I've seen "The Princess Diaries," I know how this works). But when it came time to select a jewelry gift, you instead went to the Downtown Aldovia Mall and got this basic ass Pandora bracelet with some basic ass snowflake charms. You must really hate Amber. Or maybe Pandora was just more in step with her peasant roots? 

This whole thing upset me so much that I did some research to see if Pandora sponsored this shit show. Results were inconclusive, so let's assume they didn't and that everything about this movie is just terrible. Pandora! From a royal! I weep. (Sofia would never.)

After this heartfelt exchange about how much Emily and Amber love each other just the way they are, Emily brings in her second gift: A MAKEOVER SQUAD. "You're great, now let these people change everything about you," I imagine Emily thinking.

I can't, I suppose, totally fault Emily for this, since Amber's been running around inappropriately dressed at literally every function she attends, but it's still kind of insulting. Also, it goes without saying that my favorite member of this makeover squad is the woman who's there simply to carry around two pairs of shoes.

Since Amber was invited to the ball by the prince and is Emily's tutor, you might think she'd arrive there with them, but YOU WOULD BE WRONG! She'll be popping in by herself, thank you very much, and will be inexplicably having her own stand-alone entrance at the top of a large, sweeping staircase!

Look, the makeover trope is tired, but at least it means they finally got her out of those sneakers, and I

OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. 

Prince Richard comes to greet her and Amber says, "Why are they staring?" The correct answer is, "Your shoes," but he instead tells her it's because she looks perfect, and then he leads her back up the stairs she just came down, because I guess she's his date (?) or maybe because he just wants to get her and her inappropriate footwear out of view of the guests.

Inside the ball, the prince asks Amber to dance, and LOOK WHO LEARNED TO CURTSEY!

As they waltz awkwardly, the prince tells Amber that he wouldn't be here at his coronation if it weren't for her and the three total conversations they have had about his hesitation to assume the throne. "You're more genuine than anybody I've ever met," he gushes, and Amber's conscience grows three whole sizes.

But then the prince once again blinds her with royal lust by gazing into her eyes, so she once again says and does nothing.

And then it's coronation time! Aldovia really pulled out all the stops for this. Check out those royal twinkle lights!

The prime minister runs through the coronation ceremony, which is less than a minute long and resembles nothing so much as awkward wedding vows, including a portion where members of the audience get a chance to speak up and dispute Prince Richard's claim to the throne.

He's barely done speaking before Sofia is all, "OH HELL YES!"

She calls Richard a "fradulent Christmas prince," both scalding him with a sick burn and sneaking in the name of the movie, then brandishes the adoption certificate that I guess Amber didn't notice had gone missing because she was too busy fastening her Pandora bracelet and avoiding appropriate footwear.

The prime minister asks Sofia where she got the adoption certificate and she throws Amber under the bus, saying she "uncovered a scheme" and figured out that a journalist was posing as a tutor THIS WHOLE TIME! The prime minister asks Amber if that's true. Honestly, I think there's a case for saying no - if she's a journalist, she's the worst one who ever lived - but she admits to it anyway.

The queen then tells the prime minister that the paperwork is legitimate. Richard storms offstage and Simon, who's been inching casually closer to the prime minister this entire time, hops up and says he's happy to assume his rightful place on the throne, with Sofia as his queen.

There's tepid applause. Nobody likes these idiots or wants them in charge, but what are you gonna do? It's 2017! Nothing matters!

Amber chases after the prince and attempts to apologize.

He's not really having it. He says he doesn't know who she is (she's like, "Oh yeah right, no, my real name is Amber, I'm not a tutor, hey"), and he doesn't even know who HE is! "I guess you've got a grand story to tell," he snaps, and then stalks out of the hall.

Really I feel worst of all for that couple who is arriving late to the coronation and has no idea what the hell they're about to walk into. Poor rich people. They were just hoping for a fancy night out, I bet.

Amber appears to get banished from the palace, but at least they gave her time to shower off her party makeup and take down her party hairdo before they shoved her in a cab to the airport.

HI CAPTAIN OBVIOUS, I HAVE MISSED YOU!

Inside the palace, the prince is whispering, "Why didn't you tell me?" to this portrait of the king, which seems to have been based on a photo of Dustin Hoffman.

The queen wanders in and tells Richard the whole improbable story, beginning a month after she married the king and found out she couldn't have children. LET'S PAUSE HERE TO EXAMINE THE APPROXIMATELY 1,000 QUESTIONS I HAVE, mostly about the timing of this!

I don't know a ton about fertility testing, but I do know that there are a bunch of different tests doctors have to run to determine if a woman has fertility problems. The tests take awhile to do and the results take awhile to interpret, so unless they were starting the testing basically on their wedding day, this timeline seems strange. Also, why would they be worried about her fertility a month into their marriage? I know heirs are a huge deal in royal families, but they ostensibly hadn't had any time to try to have a baby yet, and if they'd done fertility testing before the wedding it's doubtful the marriage would have gone through (if a queen ain't a babymaker she ain't becoming a queen, y'all). Basically this makes no sense, but - you guessed it! - it's 2017 and nothing matters, so let's just continue on!

"This story is so unlikely that I cannot even look at you while I tell it."

Anyway, the king and queen discovered that they could adopt "in secret," and once they saw Richard he was instantly their son (no qualifier, no exceptions), which is why they never told him. (Emily, by the way, was a bonafide miracle baby, but not miracle enough to overlook that pesky no-penis-no-crown rule - sorry Em!) After spilling her improbable guts, the queen tells Richard that she'll understand if he wants to leave, but Richard says no.

"You're my parents. I could never leave you," he says, forgetting that he already left once for an entire year back when he thought they were his biological parents.

They hug, and then the queen asks what they should do about Simon taking the throne. The prince vows that he won't let Simon win "without a fight," which given the way this movie has gone so far I sort of legitimately expected to mean there'd be a royal snowball fight throwdown. Sadly, no such luck.

Meanwhile, Simon and Sofia are getting married at city hall. This 100 percent would never happen - Sofia is a total attention whore who's only interested in Simon due to his royal pedigree, and there's zero chance she would pass on the pomp and pageantry of a full-fledged royal wedding - but whatever. Cheers to the happy couple!

"You may brush my face with your lips, but no more."

Before the ink is dry on their marriage certificate Sofia wants to get on with the coronation ceremony. The prime minister says they can't do it because the king's council isn't there and also, by law, the queen has to preside over the ceremony, which she probably isn’t gonna do because it's Christmas. Sofia, naturally, does not care. She needs a tiara and has no sympathy for the fact that the queen is probably at home in pajamas drinking egg nog right at this very moment. 

 "GO GET HER," she commands.

Amber's at the airport - she's been there all night, I guess - fingering her basic Pandora bracelet and thinking about how she's a terrible, terrible person.

Or maybe it's the basic Pandora bracelet that's making her sad. "I could have had jewels," I imagine her thinking. "Emily could have afforded them."

She pulls out her phone to call her dad, who somehow doesn't know yet that she's an awful person who's bad at her job, even though this would, by now, be an international incident that would have instantly gone viral, thus leading to Amber losing her job and any hope of a career in journalism and, potentially, any other type of career. She makes this phone call at the gate in front of a large "ALDOVIA" sign, which is very realistic, like when you fly out of La Guardia or O'Hare and every gate is decorated with a big "AMERICA" placard.

I'm so glad this movie is almost over.

Anyhoozles, Amber's dad, having no idea how much of an idiot his daughter really is, says, "It's probably not as bad as you think!" Then he tells her not to worry because, "Failures plant the seed for greater successes down the road." Somehow, this horrible sentence reminds Amber of that equally horrible poem by the king, which she somehow copied down even though she didn't  have a notebook with her at the cabin, and which she wrote right in the middle of the otherwise completely empty November pages of her planner.

Good thing she has no social life or work responsibilities, or she'd have had nowhere to jot it down!

She mutters some things - "Acorn! A love greater than blood!" - from which we are supposed to infer that she has solved the riddle, or something. I don't really know what's going on, but I'm sure it involves that hideous acorn ornament from Part 1.

Amber's dad is similarly confused. 

Relating to him a lot at the moment, honestly.

Meanwhile, Sofia's succeeded in ruining everyone's Christmas by dragging them into city hall to crown her newly minted husband, but her plan goes awry when the queen and Richard roll in and demand that the coronation ceremony be delayed.

Their logic is that the king would have wanted Richard to take the throne, but the prime minister is all, "That's cute, but the law says it has to be someone in the royal bloodline, sorry." The ceremony, he says, will go on.

Back at the palace, Amber is trying to talk her way past these security guards who I guess were hired after someone realized how easy it was for a commoner to gain access to the royal family. This new crackerjack security team, it should be noted, was still not able to keep said commoner out of the actual building.

Mrs. Averill sees her and is hella pissed, but Amber insists she may be able to prove that Richard is the rightful king, so Mrs. Averill, despite her better judgment, allows her back in. Amber storms right over to the Christmas tree, plucks that ugly acorn off its branch and pries it open to reveal a note.

Back at city hall, Simon kneels for the coronation ceremony. Literally everyone in the room groans, because literally everyone hates this idiot.

He will probably have them all killed for insubordination once he's king, but luckily, right when the prime minister gets to the "speak now or forever hold your peace" part of these weird coronation vows, Amber bursts in.

She is, naturally, wearing sneakers.

She hands over the note that was inside the acorn, which apparently was a decree from the king amending the law to allow Richard to assume the throne. It's totally legit, the prime minister says, because it has the royal wax seal on it, which is something that could not be stolen and used by someone who is not the king and therefore this document is 100 percent legally binding and absolutely changes everything!

No one seems that upset that the king did this in secret, with no witnesses, and told no one, and then stuck the ostensibly legally binding document in an ugly acorn ornament and left behind no clue that it was there other than a cryptic poem that his son only happened to stumble across while reading his diary after his death. I'm somewhat infuriated, but I'm a commoner, so who cares! It's 2017! AND NOTHING MATTERS.

Simon says he and Sofia will fight this in court, but she says she's divorcing him and leaves the room. This provides sufficient distraction for Simon, who then permanently forgets all about his lifelong ambition to the throne and leaves the room to run after Sofia, begging her to reconsider. (She does not.)

Richard then goes through the coronation wedding vows a second time, only this time he actually receives the crown. I will admit that I got a little emotional when they finally put the damn thing on his head - hard to say if it was cinema magic or just relief that maybe, finally, this movie was almost over - but it went away quickly once he stood up and I saw how dumb he looked wearing the absurdly large crown with his Wall Street suit.

Back in New York, Amber turns in her article. Her editor compliments her on a "thoughtful, mature, well-written story," but says they won't be running it because it's emotional schmaltzy crap. 

"You were at ground zero," she continues. "You had the adoption papers in your hand." Amber didn't break the real story, she says, and what she turned in won't fly.

I am of many minds about this.

First, the editor isn't wrong. Amber had access to a huge scoop and sat on it because she got emotionally invested in her subjects, then wrote a piece in which she became the story. That's all not good.

On the other hand, breaking that story would have left Amber - and ostensibly the magazine - open to about 84 different lawsuits, because she lied, and trespassed, and misrepresented herself to get (steal) the information. The palace may have been lenient on her because her snooping ultimately got Richard the throne, but it's unclear whether publishing this story (that most Americans probably don't care about) would have been worth the legal headache.

Legal issues aside, the editor's judgment of the story itself is … probably also wrong. A first-person piece about the royal family from the reporter who is almost certainly a viral star by now would have garnered a ton of attention and page views. And pretending like your dumb celebrity gossip rag is too high-brow for that type of article is insane, given the riveting discussion we witnessed in Part 1 about fashion-week coverage. 

Basically, there is no right answer here. Everyone is awful and I hate them all. 

To make matters worse, instead of firing Amber on the spot - which should have happened the second she lied to get into the palace - the editor attempts to send her back to the copy desk. But Amber, having gotten a taste of that royal Pandora journalism life, says no way. She is going to quit and focus on her own work, starting with a blog about "the real King Richard."

Her unhelpful colleagues tell her this is a great idea, so they must not be familiar with the reality of leaving a paying journalism job without another one lined up.

(Hello. Hire me.)

By New Year's Eve, Amber is working at her dad's diner, but there's plenty to celebrate because her blog about the prince - entitled "A King For Real," featuring a photo from the first coronation ceremony where he wasn't crowned king, published on her new website, "Amber's Blog" - has hit 20,000 likes!

(Am I laughing or crying? Who can tell?)

Amber's unhelpful former colleagues have dinner with her, but then they leave to go have lives on New Year's Eve while Amber stays at the diner with her dad. As she's clearing the table, a snowball hits the window, and who is outside looking in but KING RICHARD HOLY SHIT YET ANOTHER PLOT TWIST THAT I DID NOT SEE COMING!!!!

(Seriously though what is it with this guy and snowballs?)

He says he came because they never got a chance to say goodbye and that he wants to thank her for "opening a door that needed to be opened ... that's what a great reporter does." Amber should respond to this by shaking her head and handing him a copy of the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics, but instead she just makes this face.

He says Emily showed him her blog post and that everyone really misses her. And then, even though they've known each other for less than two weeks and she has been lying to him for their entire relationship and they kissed one time and have spent maybe two hours together total, he kneels right in the middle of the street and pops out a ring.

...

This moment is like every terrible Taylor Swift song rolled right into one and topped with a terrible royal bow.

In response to this idiotic proposal, Amber says, "What about my career?", apparently forgetting that she has no career other than working at the diner and running the creatively named "Amber's Blog." She also makes a bit of sense for the first time ever, saying, "We barely know each other!" but the prince waves that away, noting that he's never been more certain about anything! Not even when he was sure his parents were his biological parents or when he was sure he didn't want to be king or when he thought she was really a tutor! 

This stellar track record is enough for Amber, who is once again blinded by royal lust and shuts him up by kissing him for the second time ever!

He slides the ring on - it perfectly matches her coat, which is what you want in an engagement ring from a literal stranger - and then they kiss for the third time ever!

Inside the diner, the midnight countdown has begun, and Amber's dad wanders around looking for her, then spots her in the road kissing Richard, a person he has never met and may not recognize, given his total lack of interest in the Aldovia mess up to now. His reaction, naturally, is to raise a glass and make this face.

Behind him, someone says, "Happy new year! We made it!" I feel like this man is speaking directly to my soul.

Fireworks go off as Amber and the king kiss right into the new year. Presumably it's now 2018 and perhaps some things will matter now, though if I were placing money on it I'd say the more likely option is the obvious sequel...

..."A New Year's Queen."

Happy holidays and thanks for reading, y'all. Remember, the best gift to give yourself and others this year is to not watch this movie.