Red, White & Royal Blue (2023)

Red, White & Royal Blue arrives from Amazon Studios with the sheen of a catalog item and the soul of a fan-made daydream, which is not entirely a complaint. Matthew López, making his feature debut, adapts Casey McQuiston's 2019 novel about Alex Claremont-Diaz, the First Son, and Prince Henry of Britain, two glossy young men who loathe each other, and then do not. The cake falls. The texts fly. The private jets crisscross the Atlantic at a rate that would embarrass an airline loyalty program, though the film has no interest in that program or any other.

The romance is the point, and it is rendered with a sincerity that borders on the liturgical. Coming out happens twice, once quietly to a mother, once loudly to a hacked inbox and a global press corps. This is a picture that believes in the redemptive power of a balcony kiss, and it commits to the bit. Elsewhere the progressive furniture is present but decorative: Uma Thurman as the first woman in the Oval Office, a cast that includes Iranian-American, Black, and trans performers in working roles, a Texas campaign subplot that gestures at the Latino vote without ever asking it a hard question. Nobody here is poor. Nobody is meant to be.

The messaging, such as it is, amounts to be true to yourself and the institutions will eventually applaud. It is a fairy tale wearing a cable-news chyron, and it knows it. The earnestness never curdles into a sermon, partly because the film is too busy being charming to lecture, and partly because it has nothing especially uncomfortable to say. A pleasant, well-tailored diversion with a monarchy problem and a very good tailor. A sequel is already in development, which tells us everything about what this audience wanted and promptly received.

{"thematic_tags": ["book_adaptation"]}