Review: 'Red, White & Royal Blue' is a hopeful, watchable wonder
Welcome to an alternate romcom universe where Uma Thurman is playing the first female U.S. president, whose son (Taylor Zakhar Perez) falls for a closeted prince of England (Nicholas Galitzine) in a scandal that suggests governments will topple if their secret gets out.
No worries. In this sweetly sexy and funny fantasy, now streaming on Prime Video, nothing can stop two hottie rich boys in love. That's the special sauce that makes "Red, White & Royal Blue," based on Casey McQuiston's 2016 LGBTQ+ bestseller, such a hopeful, watchable wonder.
Don't expect realism. The politics lack the satirical bite of McQuiston's novel. And the sex between these twentysomethings rarely goes beyond the sanitized kissy-face limits of Netflix hit "Heartstopper," where even in season 2, two high school boys never get to second base.
All of which makes nonsense of the R rating tagged onto "Red, White & Royal Blue," despite flashes of nudity included by co-writer and debuting director Matthew Lopez, whose 2018 play, "The Inheritance" -- a same-sex take on E.M. Forster's "Howards End" -- won the Tony award.
Said Lopez: "I do question whether, if it had been a man and a woman, we'd still have gotten an R." Fair point.
It's up to the lead acting duo to bring the sizzling suggestion (no graphic illustrations) that their characters are having great sex. Perez ("The Kissing Booth 2" and 3) plays Alex Claremont-Diaz, the headstrong, biracial son of President Ellen Claremont (Thurman), a Texas-born democrat divorced from Alex's dad, Mexican American Sen. Oscar Diaz (Clifton Collins, Jr.).
Ellen's devout wish is that Alex not cause an international incident, which he does immediately while attending a royal wedding. Alex has long detested the alleged snobbery of this prince who's fourth in line to the throne. Like the real Prince Harry, he's less an heir than a spare.
Henry is also nothing like Alex's view of him. But the tension between them, which will soon become sexual, first manifests in a hilarious free-for-all fight between them that knocks over a royal wedding cake, covering the two tabloid poster boys in shame and buttercream frosting. On the surface, "Red, White & Royal Blue" is all buttercream. You'll have to dig for substance.
On a damage-control tour arranged by Ellen and her chief of staff Zahra (a terrific Sarah Shahi), the ice thaws between the two men. Cheers to Galitzine, who played another prince opposite Camila Cabello in 2021's "Cinderella," for finding Henry's loneliness and touching grace.
In the White House garden, Henry ("I've always been gay as a maypole") impulsively kisses the bisexual Alex, who confesses that his "low-level attraction to guys" is now escalating. It's love. That's what Alex tells his mother in a lovely coming out scene from Perez and Thurman.
Henry doesn't have it so easy. In the novel, the queen lectures him about responsibility to the crown. After the death last year of Elizabeth II, Lopez changed the monarch to a king, played by the great Stephen Fry with an edgy intolerance for his gay grandson and his grandson's lover.
It's a leak of explicit emails between Alex and Henry that sends their relationship viral, seriously reported by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid, playing themselves. The politically motivated exposure backfires when Alex and Henry find they have friends in unexpected places.
Lopez makes no apology for smoothing the path for Alex and Henry. The rise of homophobia isn't lost on him, neither are the dark endings of other queer romances such as "Brokeback Mountain" and "Call Me By Your Name."
It's a legacy of joy that drives Lopez in "Red, White & Royal Blue." Wishful thinking? Maybe. But audiences looking to connect instead of divide at the movies will surely agree it's about time.
