The Princess Switch is a Christmas film that dares to ask: What if two women looked similar, and identity fraud was not only fine but romantic?
The answer is 104 minutes of festive chaos that somehow inspired such devotion Netflix once tried to publicly shame people on Twitter for watching it too much
I should say upfront that The Princess Switch is not aimed at me, a 42-year-old woman with a vague sense of geography, a loose grasp on reality and an inkling about consent. This film is aimed at seven or maybe eight-year-old girls who believe royalty is mostly about dresses, dances, and destiny, and who have not yet developed the instinct to shout obscenities at the television.
With that said, whilst I am not seven or eight so my opinion may not matter, I thought it was entirely shit.
Vanessa Hudgens plays Stacy, an award-winning Chicago baker fresh out of a breakup, and also Lady Margaret, a duchess engaged to be married imminently to a prince she barely knows because that’s how Europe apparently works. They meet at what is essentially Royal Bake Off, are shocked (but really not shocked enough) to discover they are identical, and decide to swap lives for two days so that Lady Margaret can experience what a normal life is like. This includes swapping clothes, accents, social class, friends, romantic entanglements…You get the picture.
It sounds like a deeply stupid idea to me, but there you go.
The geography alone deserves prison.
Belgravia is apparently a country but also seems to be London, where the real Belgravia actually is, but it isn’t there because it has a palace. Wembley is mentioned as the venue of the baking competition. Everyone is English. Snow falls constantly. At one point I genuinely wondered if I was having a moment, and had to stop and Google things.
The film simply gestures at places and hopes you won’t ask questions, like a man giving directions he does not have. I think I’m overthinking it. Again, a 7 year old would never.
Hudgens’ ‘British’ accent is not enjoyable.
It sounds like AI which has been mis-programmed. She’s going for RP but pronounces ‘dancing’ like a northerner, which I will not accept.
Over the course of their two-day swap, Stacy, pretending to be a duchess, attends a royal ball, plays Twister in a mini skirt, visits a children’s orphanage, wraps presents with Prince Edward, visits the orphanage again and snogs the prince under the mistletoe inexplicably hanging there(???), and emotionally dismantles the charmingly vapid prince who she was promised would be in Spain for the duration of the swap. Sparks fly. He very clearly wants to do more than kiss her hand at the door to her bedchamber.
Meanwhile Lady Margaret, masquerading as a baker, moves in with Kevin in their Bake Off holiday digs, drinks tea, bonds intensely with his daughter (who is the only person smart enough to call out the charade), plays in the snow, sees Kevin topless, can’t cook, develops feelings for and kisses Kevin.
Kevin entirely fails to notice that his best friend of many years has undergone a full personality transplant. Men, it turns out, are structurally incapable of recognising women unless the plot allows it. This makes it especially grim when Lady Margaret starts emotionally bonding and snogging him while he thinks she’s his colleague and bestie. He buys her a locket with a photo of them and his child with Santa. At this point she absolutely should come clean. She does not.
Stacey and Margaret switch back, just in time for the big baking contest.
There is sabotage. Brianna – Stacy’s long-time baking rival – cuts the cord of their KitchenAid so they have to mix by hand! This is an actual crime, but she suffers no consequences beyond coming second. A Christmas cake is allegedly made in five hours. A Christmas cake! My nan would have started feeding her Christmas cake in June.
Obviously Stacy and Kevin win the competition – but wait! The ribbons are being handed out by none other than Prince Edward and Lady Margaret. There’s literally no getting out of this now. Ruh-roh.
And then, when the whole thing finally collapses under the weight of its own nonsense, the film unveils its master solution.
Unilateral life reassignment!
Margaret has simply… decided.
So:
- Stacy → marry the prince
- Margaret → shack up with Kevin
- Edward → emotionally redirected like a misdelivered parcel
- Kevin → surprise new duchess girlfriend, hope you’re free and not feeling too humiliated!
This is the film’s solution to the entire mess, decided in under ten minutes. A festive reshuffle like swapping place cards at a wedding.
This is absolutely unhinged and entirely on brand.
Edward wants to marry the woman he’s spent a full two days getting to know, but they wait a year because the film briefly pretends it understands reality. They marry. The kids from the orphanage are inexplicably invited to the royal wedding. Lady Margaret catches the bouquet. There’s a massive cake. Everything is fine.
In summary: Identical women, accent crimes, royal nonsense, and a plot you could explain to a Labrador, although they would still have follow-up questions about consent, and why nobody noticed anything.
And just when you think it’s over, Netflix reveals there are three of these films. A trilogy. There’s like, an additional Vanessa Hudgens in each one, or something. One of them started auto-playing before I could escape, like a threat. I will not be watching them. This is where I draw the line. I have boundaries. Netflix does not.
Rating: 3/10. Deeply abysmal.
See you tomorrow for another one, apparently.
Ps I now know that the random couple who turn up at the inn and are never spoken of again in the frankly dreadful A Castle for Christmas are in fact the aides from this film. Kev and Mags also sit down to watch A Christmas Prince. Netflix clearly has an entire cinematic Christmas Universe. I don’t care for it so far.
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You can also see my Amazon wish list here.