For many people, a familiar pastime in the weeks leading up to major winter holidays is gathering with family members and watching holiday movies, be they in a theater or on television. This year, such plans will have changed for individuals not living with the people they often spend time with during the holiday season, and curfews and lock-downs have forced movie theaters to close. However, this shouldn’t stop us from enjoying holiday movies with friends and family.
During the month of December, therefore, the Falls Free Press will present “The 12 Films of Christmas,” focusing on new holiday movies for the year 2020—a year that can do with plenty of spirit. We will review each film, whether naughty or nice, and let you know where to watch it.
When you first read or saw an adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, you most certainly felt that it needed more romance and should have a baking competition incorporated into the story. Right? Well, either way, Robin Berheim Burger and Megan Metzger certainly did when they wrote The Princess Switch, which premiered last year on Netflix. The movie did so well that a sequel has premiered this November on Netflix: The Princess Switch: Switched Again.
The Princess Switch tells the story of Stacy DeNovo (played by Vanessa Hudgens), a young baker from Chicago who wins the opportunity to compete in a prestigious Christmas baking competition in the Kingdom of Belgravia after her friend Kevin (Nick Sagar) secretly enters their bakery. While setting up for the competition, Stacy is confronted by a baking rival and forced to change her apron in another room where she encounters Lady Margaret Delacourt, Duchess of Montenaro, who is identical to Stacy (and also played by Hudgens). Wishing for time out of the spotlight, the Duchess and Stacy switch places—Stacy spends time with Margaret’s fiancée, Prince Edward of Belgravia (Sam Palladio), while Margaret spends this time with Kevin and his daughter Olivia. While impersonating the other, both women fall for the man they’ve spent this time with, improving their own lives as well as Kevin’s and Edward’s, until the time comes when they must reveal the scheme. This film ends the following year on Christmas Day at Edward and Stacy’s wedding, while also suggesting a future for Margaret and Kevin.
Switched Again brings all of these characters back, including the mysterious vendor/landscaper/solicitor/driver who constantly showed up in the first film and whose existence is still left unexplained by the end of the sequel. Also still around is Frank, the King’s butler, despite his major flaw in the first movie of taking photos of the Duchess through her bedroom window—even if it was an attempt to prove she had a double.
In the time since the last movie, Stacy has become the Princess of Belgravia. Margaret has ended her relationship with Kevin, forced to make preparations for ascending to the throne of Montenaro on Christmas Day, the King having passed away. In an attempt to rekindle the romance, Stacy hatches a plan to bring Kevin and Olivia with her to visit the soon-to-be queen, which they decide is a great way to swap places again and give Margaret time with Kevin out of the spotlight. What they don’t expect, however, is that Margaret’s cousin, Lady Fiona Pembrooke, who looks nothing like the other two women, but is also—remarkably—played by Hudgens, has her own plans to swap places with her cousin, though not in as cooperative a manner. The issue for her, as her plan plays out, is whether or not Margaret is actually Margaret, and how serious of a law she and her lackeys break.
Of course, the love story works for the best in this story, as it did in the original, though that would not be unexpected in any of Netflix’s recent Christmas films, which seems to be attempting to take the holiday movie crown away from Lifetime and Hallmark with their string of Mad Libs-created holiday classics. The surprise does come, however, with a cameo from King Richard and Queen Amber of Aldovia, the main characters of Netflix’s previous string of Christmas films, The Christmas Prince, in the pews for the royal crowning. Considering there has been no statement that either fictional kingdom are near each other, this could mean that either this is their passing of the torch to continue the Switch films, or that there might be a fourth Prince movie in the future.
This sequel feels unlike the original in plot, but follows the theme of The Princess Switch completely. Nevertheless, fans of the original will feel right at home. Hudgens (with help from the makeup crew) seamlessly resembles and plays Fiona in a different direction that her main characters, and the idea that everybody doesn’t realize at first—that she can pass as her cousin—is very believable, despite her being the same person. If such a trilogy of films comes to exist next Christmas, it would be an interesting turn for Hudgens to taking on such an active role as Tatiana Maslany in regularly playing a room full of clones in Orphan Black.
The Princess Switch: Switched Again is available to watch on Netflix.
