Movie Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue

Rating: 45/100

Romantic comedies are one of the oldest genres in film. While we tend to think of it as a modern genre, even the golden age of cinema had romantic comedies like Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday or Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell’s Seven Year Itch. The formula is simple: two beautiful, likable people meet and can’t quite get together because of some complication but, through the power of love, they overcome the obstacles to show that love conquers all.

The queer rom-com is a fairly new invention, with Bros probably being the biggest budget entry into the genre thus far, but there have been smaller ones, particularly Christmas rom-coms like the Hulu original Happiest Season or Hallmark and Lifetime’s recent Christmas films like The Christmas Sitter and The Christmas Setup. The queer rom-com has an even easier time with the classic formula because the complication that keeps the couple apart is already built in: coming out is hard in a homophobic society.

Red, White, and Royal Blue is a queer rom-com that hits Amazon Prime Video today and tells the love story of Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the son of the President of the United States, and Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) of England. The two meet and, in typical rom-com style, they start out hating each other. But, because the two countries are allies, they’re forced to make nice with each other for the press and eventually discover their mutual attraction to each other. Alex desires to take their relationship public thanks to his surprisingly supportive parents from Texas, but Henry is hesitant as he knows that his grandfather, King James III (ironically played by the openly gay Stephen Fry) is a raging homophobe. But, of course, in the end, the two decide to buck with tradition and live happily ever after. I would put a spoiler alert on that, but I feel like you already knew that was going to be the plot of the movie as soon as I said that it was a rom-com about the first son and the prince of England.

This movie employs a very, very tried-and-true rom-com formula in the name of queer assimilation. While it may be about queer characters, it’s about very rich, entitled, cis men exclusively. There’s an attempt to claim that Alex actually comes from a working-class background and his mother, President Claremont (Uma Thurman) managed to be one of those few who won the American dream and pulled herself up from a working-class life to the presidency. While that’s a nice fantasy that has come true for a small handful of people, it’s hardly something that working-class queers are going to relate to. Also, Alex’s entitled attitude throughout the movie doesn’t seem consistent with someone from a working-class background. There’s one mention in the President’s acceptance speech where she talks about how people say elections don’t matter, but tell that to the transgender high school student voting for the first time. That’s a really weird way to shoehorn in some lip service to the trans community in this movie, but OK.

It also seemed strange that Henry was the one not willing to go public with their relationship, as Alex’s family were actually at risk of losing their position over the situation, and Henry’s family is not. Princes aren’t elected, so if a prince came out as gay, they couldn’t remove him from office. Nor should the prince’s family be worried about scandal, as they’re pretty much immune from any repercussions. Alex does give a very eloquent speech in the movie about how every queer person has a right to come out on their own timeline, and that’s a very fair point. I definitely would agree with Henry coming out on his own timeline if he were a real person. But as he’s a fictional character, I feel a little justified in saying, “What the hell, Henry?”

The characters are definitely endearing and charming; there’s no question about that. Even the most cynical of viewers will have moments where they find themselves rooting for these two characters to make it. But the bottom line is that it’s a movie about people who don’t face the kinds of problems that most actual queer people deal with. It’s a fun, light, breezy way to kill two hours, but it’s hardly representative of the LGBTQ community.

Image courtesy of Amazon Studios