Watched: 06/02/2025
Format: Hallmark
Viewing: Unknown
Director: Alex Zamm
Job: Tailor/ Would-be-Fashion Deisgner
Location of story: vague Europe
new skill: passing for someone allowed in public
Man: Steven Hagen
Job of Man: Prince
Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to
Event: The Royal Christmas Ball
Food: pancakes
I have two more non-Christmas movies to watch as part of ChabertQuest 2025, but just wasn't in the mood for either after a weird couple of weeks around Signal Watch HQ. So, instead, I went down the list of the Christmas movies I have to get through, and we picked this one.
While I had not previously written this one up, I am positive I've seen it in parts or in whole as I certainly remembered bits of it, so I am not calling it a First Viewing.
Wrongly, I believed that A Royal Christmas (2014) was Chabert's first Christmas movie for Hallmark. It's not. We'll get to that one. Nor is it even close to the first basic cable Christmas movie about an unlikely American regular-ol'-girl who sweeps a prince off his feet. But it does appear to have been the moment Hallmark fully invested in Chabert for Christmas, and ten years later, she basically signed a contract to be the Queen of Hallmark Christmas.
The movie was filmed in Romania, but with American and English talent. Jane Seymour co-stars, which can't have been inexpensive. And they have a whole castle, block off city streets, etc... Maybe it's a huge budget! Maybe the dollar goes super far in Romania! I have no idea.
Our basic story is that Chabert is a normal girl with a dream to be a fashion designer. She works at her dad's tailor shop in Philadelphia and has been dating an MBA student, Leo, for a year. Leo is to spend Christmas with Chabert and her dad, but Leo is suddenly summoned home. Before he departs, she learns Leo is actually Leopold, a legit prince of a small, independent country in the South of France. A sort of San Marino, I guess. But it is what SNL would call The Kingdom of Caucasia. And, so the movie can happen, she goes along.
At home in Caucasia, Queen Jane Seymour does not like her son's choice because Chabert is an American of no exceptional breeding and unstudied in courtly ways. Also, she acts like a childish boor who's never had to interact with people before and can't read a room. In many ways, this movie feels like it was - at a few points - written about a wayward 10 year old in a castle.
There's a Duchess lurking around, played by Seymour's daughter, who looks very much like her mother (good for her! That worked out well for Seymour). So the Queen's attempts to get Chabert out of the picture and get her son with her look-alike is kinda hilarious.
The form of government is unclear, but being a royal seems to mean wearing clothes from Men's Wearhouse and doing photo-ops. Because I am not a royals follower, that may be accurate.
All in all, it's a VERY Hallmark Christmas movie, with all the usual beats you're looking for. And really sticks the landing when it comes to winning over the prickly queen, and showing that a regular girl (maybe a girl like YOU, viewer!) would be what a Kingdom really needs. Chabert's general perkiness is very winning, charming the court, getting a royal couple to adopt an adorable orphan, and even charming Seymour's IRL daughter. They do full-on Hallmark reminiscing. The man has no personality other than adoration of Chabert, who mostly brings moxie to the table.
In the way of Hallmark consistently just wholesale borrowing from other movies, it also features a scene from Pretty in Pink wherein she remakes a gown, a pink gown, for a dance.
As Jamie pointed out, this thing of the Royals treating an American commoner like trash seems to have actually happened since this movie came out. So that's weird. I doubt the verbal and mental abuse Megan Markle experienced was done to wacky synth music.
Is it stupid?
That's a real YMMV question. It's a movie that's a fairy tale, and one that Hallmark tells over and over, Christmas or not. I don't think it's really a problem, but by your tenth movie where a regular girl meets a prince in disguise or is hired to nanny the adorable moppet child of a widowed prince, it can wear a bit thin.
I don't hate it. But I also think it's the one of the few of these I need.
This movie is so light, if you blew on it, it'd come apart like a dandelion in the wind. And Chabert matches that energy. There's scenes in this I think are not great where she's asked to be the awkward, but effusive, girl trying her best among royalty, but that's writing, not her. She understands the assignment, and I think is charming here.
Fun fact! Chabert had been married just prior to filming, and it seems she used her own wedding dress for the wedding sequence, and it's a banger. Well done, Ms. Chabert.
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