Oh no. That wedding cake looks like trouble.
It’s one of the largest wedding cakes in the history of movies, and as it looms so huge in the near background at a reception, looking wobbly on its stand, as two characters bicker with one another, bobbing this way and that, that we know it’s only a matter of time before that enormous ivory wedding cake is going to come crashing down. We are not disappointed, nor are we amused. It’s a cheap physical gag rendered utterly impotent by its utter predictability and slapstick payoff.
So it goes with the innocuous and warmhearted but rather deadly, low-charm rom-com “Red, White & Royal Blue,” which is based on the well-received LGBT romance novel of the same name by Casey McQuiston and has now been adapted into a Prime Video feature film that’s frothier and more vanilla than the frosting on that all-white wedding cake. Even with the intriguing set-up of the romantic leads being the First Son of the United States and a “Spare Heir” British prince, everything plays out in predictable fashion, and the R-rated humor manages to be bawdy yet often wildly unfunny, e.g., double-entendre jokes referencing tumescence as “Big Ben” and lines such as, “My NDA is bigger than yours.” Wince.
“Red, White & Royal Blue” kicks off with a royal wedding, at which there’s a confrontation between the groom’s younger brother, Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), and one Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the son of Uma Thurman’s President Ellen Claremont. When Alex returns home, he’s summoned to the Oval Office (one of the many unconvincing sets on display here), and is told by his mother that the incident screwed up some “three years of negotiating a new trade deal with England,” how about that? Even more pressing, mom is running for re-election, and this is not helping. As the president puts it, “Before this weekend, I had a higher approval rating than the prime minister. Hell, I was outpolling the Spice Girls.” Wait what? No offense to the Spice Girls, who doesn’t love the Spice Girls, but how dusty is that reference?
In the interest of avoiding another Revolutionary War or something, both nations agree it’s imperative for Alex and Henry to spend time together and pretend to be best bros, even though they can’t stand each other. Why, it’s almost as if they’re denying the obvious chemistry between them (though neither has publicly come out at this point). Cue the obligatory scenes of the lads becoming friends and then something more, but not until there’s a scene in which they’re both literally shoved into a closet, don’t ask.
There’s something artificial about nearly every scene in this movie, whether it’s the stilted dialogue or the terrible-looking fake snow in the scene when Henry and Alex first kiss. It doesn’t help that the political subplots seem just as shallow, e.g., Alex writes a 14-page memo about how his mother can swing Texas to the Democratic side, and that must be some memo, kid.
Despite its attempts to be racy and of-the-moment and to earn that R rating, “Red, White & Blue” comes across as contrived and, at its foundation, quite formulaic. Not even the cake gives a convincing performance.
