In 2019 the gang returned for A Christmas Prince 3: The Royal Baby and, sadly, this one feels much more like an uninspired cash grab, short on ideas. The action this time is pretty much confined to the palace and it all gets real boring real quick.
This time, yes, the happily married king and queen are expecting their first baby. We're explicitly told that the child isn't due until mid-January but, come on - we’re not daft. There's many few scenes of our handsome couple fannying about with baby monitors, building cribs and stuff, which does not make for an exciting film but, luckily, that's not all it's about.
The main plot concerns some sort of mega-important treaty with the "neighbouring" friendly nation of Penglia, which I assume is in Asia. Apparently this treaty must be renewed every 100 years - at Christmas, naturally - or some sort of confusing economic disaster will befall the universe. I'm not too sure.
The Penglian king and queen pop over for a festive visit and seem cool. Amber and Queen Ming (Momo Yeung) chat a bit about how the royal ladies should be allowed to do more and how they should be the ones to sign the treaty, because #MeToo. It's all very dull indeed until the treaty goes missing and the film turns into another shady mystery tale. They find very flimsy ways to have all the players from part two return, including the irritating, camp party planner. We also get a soggy love triangle between snobby Simon, Amber's pal Melissa (Tahirah Sharif) and the Mings' sexy attache Lynn (Crystal Yu), but it doesn't really come to much.
The writers seem to understand that this is all a bit crap, so they also throw in some nonsense about an ancient curse and a dungeon-dwelling ghost but it's all rather asinine and the culprit turns out to be some marginal character we don't give a toss about.
Amber feels like a passenger in her own franchise now and the writers struggle to find anything thrilling or interesting for our pregnant heroine to do. A scene with her ice-skating with Richard on a special chair is set up to be romantic as hell but is just a bit weird and crap.
Ben Lamb is also put into various situations that highlight just how dull his character really is, with scenes where the monarch struggles to get to grips with baby monitors and cribs and stuff played for laughs but just coming across as awkward and lame.
This one's nowhere near as engaging or surprising as part two and this franchise has quickly run out of steam. It's just hard to care too much for these rich, beautiful people who don't want for much. Amber's journalism career gets a little nod and her commoner NYC dad turns up again for a few minutes but, overall, the whole film reeks of a desperate "will this do?" effort.
This might have been infinitely better if they'd chosen to go full-on Scooby Doo with the ghostly stuff but it's all very tame. Worst of all, after all the build-up, save for a little car trouble in the snow, the whole birth thing lacks any real drama and pretty much goes off without a hitch. This film commits that cardinal sin of making childbirth look piss-easy. Flashing back to our daughter's blood-soaked genesis, I can confirm that it most certainly is not.
At the time of writing there's no word on whether we can expect a fourth helping of Christmas Prince drama. On this limp showing, the franchise doesn't deserve one. Or am I just a cynical, grumpy git necause I've watched, like, a million of these things now!?!?
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