A Royal Christmas on Hallmark Channel

Category: Television and Streaming

royal christmasLacey Chabert, Stephen Hagan, and Jane Seymour star in this sweet story of true love. A Royal Christmas is part of Hallmark’s “Countdown to Christmas.”

 

Emily Taylor (Chabert) is a kind-hearted, spirited woman who is designing and creating her own line of clothing while working in her father’s tailor shop. Emily has been dating MBA student Leo James (Hagen) for almost a year. This will be their first Christmas together, and they plan on spending it with her father and best friend. But when Leo gets a call from home, everything changes. Leo is being summoned home for the holidays, and this is the perfect time for him to come clean with Emily. He has been hiding something important from her and cannot keep it a secret any longer.

 

Leo is actually Prince Leopold from the small country of Cordinia near the South of France. How’s that for a shocker for an unassuming young woman? Then the next shocker is that Leo wants Emily to accompany him home for the holidays – in the castle with his mother the Queen!

 

Emily decides to go to Cordinia with Leo, the man she loves. It’s there she will see if Leo James and Prince Leopold are different. And, it there she will come up against Queen Isadora (Seymour).

 

Needless to say, the queen would prefer her son and his former girlfriend Natasha, Duchess of Warren (Katherine Flynn) get back together. After all, Natasha is a better match for the prince. But the thing is, Leo is in love with Emily and she loves him back. So, even though the queen does everything in her power to push Leo and Natasha together, he keeps finding his way back to Emily.
And Emily manages to change everything. She hangs out with the help, and although she initially makes one blunder after another (like mistaking the finger bowl for a bowl of soup), she is endearing to everyone except the queen, who is a real “Royal Pain.”

 

Jane Seymour’s real-life daughter is Katherine Flynn, and watching the two of them on screen is fun. No doubt we’ll be seeing them starring together in the future.

 

Queen Isadora’s meddling in her son’s life and scheming with Natasha are not enough to keep true love away, even though they do come close. Everyone, including the entire staff, is rooting for Emily. Chabert is endearing as the young American woman with strong ideas and a heart of gold.

 

So this story has been done over and over again, in fairy tales and films. But there is something very appealing about this particular movie that makes it entertaining and completely enjoyable to watch, even though we have all seen it before. If you take The Prince and Me (2004), add Monster-in-Law (2005), and a side storyline from The Princess Diaries (2001), you get A Royal Christmas.

 

So, grab a bowl of popcorn and settle in for an enchanting and completely charming movie. A Royal Christmas premiers November 22, 2014 on Hallmark.

 

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment business for 20 years. She also writes about technology and has been a travel writer for the past 12 years. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

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