The Princess Switch (2018)

The Princess Switch arrives from Netflix with the confidence of a film that knows precisely what it is and has no intention of being anything else. A Chicago baker named Stacy and a duchess named Margaret discover they are identical, and two days of swapped identities follow, which is the plot of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper relocated to a fictional European kingdom and furnished with tinsel. Vanessa Hudgens plays both women. The camera admires a castle. Somebody wins a baking competition. The whole enterprise is as harmless as a snow globe and roughly as deep.

Where the modern social consciousness is concerned, this is barren ground. Race is never mentioned, though the cast includes a South Asian man in a leading role and a Black child in a prominent one, both of them simply present, going about their business as father and daughter. No character questions the monarchy. No character critiques the wealth on display, which the camera adores. Nobody discusses the environment, the body, or the mind. The romance is heterosexual and traditional to its bones, and the women's ambitions resolve neatly into marriage and a bouquet toss. There is no lecture here. The film would not know how to give one.

The result is a holiday confection with a mild, incidental note of inclusive casting and nothing else to trouble the cultural ledger. It is pleasant. It is forgettable. It spawned two sequels, which suggests the algorithm has an appetite for this sort of thing, and the audience, apparently, does too. We file it accordingly.