How does it hold up compared to Hallmark? Let’s take a look!
These are my Christmas SPOILERS!
Samantha Logan (Alexis Knapp) is a teacher in New York City who is preparing to head back to her small hometown in Wisconsin for Christmas. Unfortunately, this means she can’t spend the holiday with her boyfriend Alex (Callum Alexander), who works at the embassy of a small European nation. Especially as he’s also heading home for Christmas.
Except he surprises her in her little Wisconsin town, wanting to spend Christmas with her. But that’s not the only surprise he has for her. A high school classmate of Samantha’s, waitress Heidi (Chelsea Gilson), recognizes Alex as the prince and future king of his small European nation and freaks out. Samantha is stunned to learn this and Alex has to do damage control.
It’s the usual explanation that he wanted to be normal and not have her worry about dating a prince, blah blah blah. After they talk it over, Samantha decides to forgive him and they head to her house to meet her parents, Sandra (Pamela Sue Martin) and Jim (Parker Stevenson). Alex is given his own room as Samantha settles back into hers. She can’t get a lot of sleep, though, and when she goes online, she discovers Heidi has posted the picture she took of Samantha and Alex to a blog that tracks royals. Panicked, Samantha calls her best friend Leanne (Tyler Clark), who assures her it can’t be that bad and to get some sleep.
Over in Europe, though, the blog comes to the attention of Alex’s parents, Queen Helena (Jane Carr) and King Frederick (Charles Shaughnessy). His father isn’t very concerned but his mother is. She’s already upset that he’s not coming home for Christmas but now everyone knows he has an American girlfriend. She frets about this as there are certain ways things are done in their country and apparently arranged marriages are one. She and King Frederick are in one and they did fall in love. Frederick tells her to give Alex some space.
Helena, though, has other ideas. She summons her personal secretary, Felicia (Marina Sirtis), and orders her to go to America to manage the situation. Felicia agrees and heads off to pack her bags.
For a large part of the movie, it’s just Sam showing off her town’s Christmas traditions to Alex. There were times I wondered if the movie was just made because some writer wanted to write about all these amazing Christmassy things and then through in a royal subplot. Because the town seems more developed than our two leads.
More on that later.
Felicia arrives in Wisconsin and easily tracks down Alex since everyone knows where he is. She has an awkward meeting with Samantha and her parents before Alex takes her to her hotel so they could have a talk. Surprisingly, Felicia likes Samantha and is okay with Alex dating her. However, she just wants to make sure that both know what they are getting into—with Sam’s life in New York and him due to return to his small European country to start taking on my duties. She doesn’t want to see them crash and burn because of distance or because Sam can’t handle the pressures of being a royal.
In a departure from most of these types of movies, Sam and Alex’s conflict is internal rather than external—even with a disapproving mother. Felicia doesn’t try to break them up. Samantha’s ex boyfriend, Patrick (Brad Benedict), does seem to have some lingering feelings about their breakup but he ends up with Heidi. And Queen Helena sends the woman she expects Alex to marry, Catriona Toop (Clara), but Clara is as keen on this whole arranged marriage deal as he is. They agree to be friends and that’s it.
However, Samantha struggles with what it means to be dating a prince. Reporters swarm them now that they know Alex is in the country and they want to know everything. Sam just wants to enjoy her usual holiday traditions—a diabetes inducing donut filled with eggnog, gingerbread house making competition, hayride, etc.---but can’t do so in peace because someone is always there to demand her attention.
Added to this is the fact that Samantha has just been offered a dream job. She would be designing the curriculum for the city of New York. (Though I’m pretty sure our curriculum is dictated by the state of New York, but whatever). It would mean having to stay in New York for a few more years at the least and she isn’t sure she is ready to give that up to move to the small European nation for Alex. Even Alex has doubts that she would be happy living there, far away from her family and friends.
So while it is refreshing to see more of an internal struggle, the problem is that the movie doesn’t do a very good job at showing us that the leads should stay together. In the end, I found myself rooting for them to realize it wouldn’t work and break up, even if that wouldn’t make much sense for a Christmas movie. One of the problems, as mentioned, was the lead actors. Their performances, especially Knapp, came across as a little too wooden. She and Callum Alexander had very little chemistry. It would’ve been more interesting to see Tyler Clark acting as Sam opposite him and see if it would’ve sparked something more.
But in the end, Sam and Alex realize that they want to be together. Alex stands up to his mother and she says that she wanted to see him show some backbone so she now approves of Sam. And they all celebrate Christmas in matching pajamas.
So that was My Christmas Prince. It was cute but as I said, I spent most of the movie rooting for the couple to break up, not stay together. Knapp and Callum Alexander barely had any chemistry and it almost seemed like they were just sleepwalking through the movie. Everyone else took it seriously and Sirtis was absolutely wonderful in it.
So my opinion? You can skip this one. Unless you like Marina Sirtis. Then definitely watch her scenes on YouTube.
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