Two years ago, Netflix’s A Christmas Prince was the silly, meme-ready movie none of us knew we needed. Despite its absurdly illogical storytelling and undeniable tackiness, it was charming. Unfortunately, its sequel, last year’s A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding, was an uneasy mix of politics, personal drama and forced holiday cheer that was more often frustrating than fun. Luckily, this year’s installment, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby, combines the best of both films.
The film finds Aldovia’s King Richard (Ben Lamb) and former New Yorker, Queen Amber (Rose McIver), awaiting their first-born child. However, before they can take a break from their royal duties and prepare for the baby’s January due date, Richard and Amber have to renew the treaty that ended the war between Aldovia and the nearby (and equally imaginary) country of Penglia on Christmas Eve 600 hundred years prior.
Though Richard and Amber want to modernize the process by allowing the queens to also sign the treaty for the first time, King Tai (Kevin Shen) and Queen Ming (Momo Yeung) are very traditional and refuse. The point becomes moot, though, when the scroll combining the previous treaties disappears and, if it’s not found and signed by midnight on Christmas Eve, then not only will the war between the countries resume, but a curse will befall Aldovia’s unborn royal baby.
Considering Richard and Amber’s behavior in the previous film, maybe that baby deserves to be cursed. Much of what made The Royal Wedding so frustrating was that it depicted Richard and Amber as such terrible rulers that Aldovia seemed on the cusp of revolution and they don’t do much to change that here. Though Amber spent the last year studying Aldovian history and seemingly winning over everyone in the kingdom (at least, according to her own blog post), the first thing she does when meeting the Penglian royals is to commit a faux pas by *checks notes* introducing herself? It’s a bizarre moment not just because writer Nate Atkins doesn’t give the audience enough context to understand why Amber’s actions would draw literal gasps from the spectators, but because the standoffishness between the Aldovians and Penglians in that scene so quickly becomes irrelevant.
Atkins clearly saw Crazy Rich Asians and in those first moments, Queen Ming feels embarrassingly like a rip-off of Michelle Yeoh’s Eleanor. From the second she steps out of the car, Ming is already looking down her nose at Amber and continues to condescend to her in the following scenes. So, when the scroll disappears, the natural assumption is that it would spark an international incident. Instead, not only to the Aldovians act as if the disappearance of this priceless historical artifact isn’t a big deal, but Amber and Richard decide that the best way to smooth over this diplomatic nightmare is to pass the Penglians of to former villain, Simon (Theo Devaney) to play a traditional Aldovian board game about who can decorate Christmas tree the best.
In any other film, that scene would irrevocably turn the audience against it, but it’s precisely the film’s conviction that the magic of Christmas (and, on some level, Amber’s journalistic skill) will solve everything that ultimately makes it not only so hard to take seriously, but so inexplicably pleasant. Is it utterly unbelievable that Amber and Richard wouldn’t care about finding the missing scroll until they hear about the possible curse? Absolutely, but adding such an insane twist also makes realism irrelevant. Does it make no sense that stuck-up Ming would not only be fairly calm about being separated from her three children over the holidays, but would willingly go to the Aldovian Christmas Market to mingle with commoners? Completely, but nothing that matters in the real world actually matters in the Christmas Prince universe and that’s why it’s so fun.
More than any previous Netflix Christmas film, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby is pure escapism. Sure, you could complain about how illogical the story or character beats are, but that would be missing the point. These films are about getting swept up in the magic of Christmas and the consuming power of love. And more than any film before it, Baby makes that total break with reality look like art.
