‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ Gives Off a Political-Rom-Com Nostalgic Vibe – Great

Of all the politics–adjacent pop culture to come out of 2004, one of the uncanniest coincidences was the release of the two separate major-studio films about the rebellious teenage daughter of a fictional president. In January of that year, Chasing Liberty followed Anna Foster (played by Mandy Moore) on a trip to Europe, where she maneuvered out of her father’s clutches and into the arms of an undercover Secret Service agent. And First Daughter, released that September, followed Sam MacKenzie (Katie Holmes) to her first semester of college in California, where she, too, maneuvered out of her father’s clutches and into the arms of an undercover Secret Service agent.

The late 1990s and early 2000s were a boom period for this type of frothy romantic comedy, set in a real-world political context without much real-world politics. In Chasing Liberty, First Daughter, and the 1998 made-for-TV classic, My Date With the President’s Daughter, the demands of the presidency serve mostly as a justification for the fathers’ heightened protectiveness over their teenage girls. And in movies about overseas royalty, like The Princess Diaries and The Prince & Me, the revelation that a character is part of the monarchy mostly focuses on the interpersonal fallout. These movies’ sanguine approach to politics is part of their appeal. They feel like interchangeable entrants in a Disney Channel cinematic universe where a political problem, if it ever exists, can be solved by some headstrong teen just opening up to their hardworking single parent—who, it turns out, happens to be the president of the United States.

Red, White & Royal Blue, a new film streaming on Prime Video, takes inspiration from that bygone era of schmaltzy politics-adjacent rom-coms—with some notable twists. The film’s protagonist is the first son of the United States—a biracial, bisexual law student named Alexander Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), who falls hard for Prince Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor of Wales (Nicholas Galitzine) after the two are forced to fake a friendship to preserve diplomatic relations between the United States and the United Kingdom. As an odd-couple romantic comedy, it’s earnest and easily watchable meme fodder that riffs on the classic enemies-to-lovers trope. And unlike some of its predecessors, it attempts to meaningfully situate its love story within the high-stakes arena of contemporary politics. But its cheery fantasy—of youthful antics playing out against an adult backdrop of responsible governance—feels progressively more false and, in the current moment of geopolitical turmoil, lands somewhat uncomfortably.

Directed by Matthew López, who co-wrote the script with Ted Malawer, Red, White & Royal Blue is an adaptation of the author Casey McQuiston’s 2019 novel. When it was published, the book quickly gained fans across social media, and on the romance-obsessed, best-seller-fueling virality machine known as BookTok. It’s not hard to see why the book won over readers: McQuiston started writing the novel during the 2016 presidential election, when the idea of a woman leading the nation seemed just within reach. After the shock of Donald Trump’s election, McQuiston’s book—set in an alternate timeline where a woman did win in 2016—became an escapist thrill for readers, especially those who, like the author, are queer. In the upside-down world of Red, White & Royal Blue, gay sex is plentiful and homophobia is widely condemned. Alex isn’t just a regular kid with a mom who supports him as a young queer person; he is the son of a Texas Democrat whose public embrace of her child helps her clinch reelection by turning her home state blue.

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Throughout their lustful and heady courtship, Alex and Henry teach each other about life on either side of the pond; it’s sort of what Hamilton might feel like if it were a contemporary queer romance green-lighted by Archewell, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s production company. “In America, if you’re an immigrant with a Z in your last name, there’s not a lot of people in positions of power that look like you or sound like you,” Alex tells Henry in bed one morning. “I’ve been given a chance to be someone in the world that my father didn’t see when he was growing up.” In the role of President Ellen Claremont, Uma Thurman acts as a clear stand-in for the lean-in leadership that many Americans voted for in 2016: She’s an accomplished, self-assured career woman who was first elected to political office at 27, and takes cues from her diverse staffers during her reelection campaign. The electoral map is competitive, we’re led to believe, but it’s not unfair. Not only can a white woman from Texas win two presidential elections, but she can do so alongside her Mexican American husband and their biracial children.

Still, Red, White & Royal Blue can’t help but brush up against the limitations of this type of narrative in a post-Trump, post–January 6 world. The movie enters a political climate in which two-party governance is no longer a steady electoral system, and national politicians openly advocate for violence against rivals. Unlike McQuiston’s book, which paints President Claremont’s opponent as a far-right Republican, the film portrays him as a middle-of-the-road conservative, an unimposing Michigan governor whose main campaign platform is bringing more jobs to the Midwest. The modern roster of Republican politicians is far more fearsome: Against the backdrop of Trump’s ongoing indictments, the GOP’s push for punitive migration policies in states such as Texas, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s rise to national prominence, watching a hopeful, West Wing–esque election play out on-screen feels jarring.

Henry, who is fourth in the line of succession, is disillusioned about his station even before he comes to terms with being gay. But several years into the unending frenzy of media coverage of and fan fiction about the real-life Duke and Duchess of Sussex, it’s hard not to roll your eyes at Henry’s moments of ostensible epiphany. “The idea of royalty in the 21st century—it’s so antiquated,” he says at one point. “Sometimes I wonder if what we do has any meaningful impact on people’s lives.” This doesn’t quite register as an earnest reflection from someone with “Windsor”—an actual royal house with plenty of real-world context—in their title, and the movie is at its weakest when it lobs such gentle critiques at an institution it nonetheless seems to expect viewers to respect and be dazzled by.

Where the film does succeed is in capturing the uniquely corny dynamics of youthful infatuation, as Zakhar Perez and Galitzine bring a made-for-fancasting warmth to their characters that deepens the film’s sometimes-shaky writing of their relationship. For the most part, the reluctant young paramours are charming even when they’re being idiots, to each other or about the world around them: They input contact names like “HRH [His Royal Highness] Prince Dickhead💩” into their phones, trade personally significant items of jewelry, and tell each other about their childhood joys with their eyes wide and their hearts open. These scenes are generally delightful, and in Galitzine’s case in particular, they offer a cautiously optimistic look at what we might expect from at least one other forthcoming BookTok adaptation. (He is set to star alongside Anne Hathaway in The Idea of You, based on the 2017 Robinne Lee novel inspired by Harry Styles.)

When the actor embodies the lighter quirks of his character, he accesses some of the adolescent verve that made those Y2K-era political rom-coms so fun to watch. And it’s not his fault—or Red, White & Royal Blue’s—that the youthful mischief animating those earlier films is no longer contrasted by the actions of capable, levelheaded adults in government. It’s a different world, and some of the old stories just haven’t carried over.