Oh joy of joys, the next day sees the long-awaited (by me, at least) arrival of The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star. Have I inadvertently become a Hugdens/Princess Switch fan? SSshhhh….don’t tell anyone.
Like the madly successful Fast and Furious series, this franchise has confidently evolved into something far more audacious and ridiculous than the identity-swapping romcom shenanigans of part one. For number three, it’s turned into a full-blown heist movie. Better yet, like those F&F movies, they’ve realised that the villain is the most interesting character, so put her front and centre. This time it’s all about deliciously naughty Fiona (Hugdens, again) who is given an exciting redemption arc in a preposterous plot that suggests only she can save the day. Again, thanks to Hugdens’ general awesomeness, they totally get away with it.
My only big disappointment is that the film teases glimpses of Fiona’s long-lost mum but when we finally see her at the end it’s not Hugdens in old lady makeup. Now that would have been good.
So, it’s Christmas again and doppelgangers Princess Stacey and Queen Margaret are hanging out in the outrageously opulently decorated palace of Belgravia. For some reason our beloved monarchs are being loaned the fancy bejewelled ‘Christmas Star’ by the Vatican and, naturally, it gets stolen from under their noses because, as we know, security is rubbish in these Christmas movie palaces.
For suitably mad reasons our royal replicas can’t go to the cops, so they bust feisty Fiona out of her convent prison to get her to do her master thief super fashionista thing s and get the jewel-ly thing back. This leads to Fiona pretty much taking over the whole film, showing off an awesome variety of outrageous outfits.
Both Margaret and Stacey are required to do the ‘switch’ and pretend to be Fiona for thoroughly contrived reasons, leading to fun ‘training’ montages and a wonderful scene where Margaret-as-Fiona dances a flawless tango with baddie Hunter Cunard (Will Kemp), euro-thief extraordinaire. It’s an awesome set-piece that again leaves me in awe of Hugden’s abilities. Give this girl a superhero film or something.
Crazy Rich Asians’ Remy Hii pops up as Fiona’s old flame, an ex-Interpol super-spy dude who helps them pull off some Mission Impossible-type heist stuff, including a ‘dodging the lasers’ scene to rival that saucy Catherine Zeta Jones bit in Entrapment. They clearly wanted to push this franchise as hard as they could and credit to them for not just doing a dull Christmas Prince-style sequel with no fun ideas. With this one they don’t so much jump the shark as dance a sexy tango on top of its head.
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