Lifetime's 'William & Kate' Features Attractive Cast, Clandestine Hookups, Cringe-Worthy Karaoke
April 19, 2011 — -- Whatever dramatic cliches the royal wedding on April 29 lacks, Lifetime's "William & Kate: Let Love Rule" makes up for in spades.
The made-for-TV movie premiered stateside Monday night and will air in Britain five days before the real life Prince William and Kate Middleton tie the knot.
If you squint, you might mistake the buff, blonde Nico Evers-Swindell and lithe, brunette Camilla Luddington for the soon-to-be newlyweds, but there's no denying that the people around them came straight out of central casting.
(Actor Ben Cross, though shorter than Prince Charles, boasts a wave of grey hair that Charles himself would envy.)
In fact, the movie was filmed on a small budget in Los Angeles, Calif. with UCLA standing in for the University of St. Andrews.
If most of the cast looks like they just stumbled off the coast of Malibu, that's probably because they did.
Lifetime's version of the couple's love story boasts the twists and turns typical of, well, a Lifetime original made-for-TV movie.
In the film, William falls for Kate during a college fashion show in which she struts down the runway wearing a see-through tube dress that might have come off the clearance rack of Frederick's of Hollywood.
He first kisses her in the pouring rain, but only after they both insist that they're "just friends." As flatmates, they tiptoe in and out of each other's bedrooms at all hours of the night. (What could they possibly be doing in there?)
It's all in good fun, but some things genuinely don't make sense.
After blowing up at William for not having time to acknowledge her at his royal birthday party, Kate has a heart-to-heart with his father -- William doesn't have enough time but Prince Charles does?
Later, William wins Kate's heart back by serenading her at a ski lodge lounge. (Karaoke, a royal pastime, really?)
British Critics Pan Lifetime's 'William & Kate'
The couple faces another bump in the road when William ditches Kate to party with his boys, leading to a temporary breakup that leaves Kate crying in the bathtub, clutching a glass of red wine.
"Waity Katie" eventually gets her wish when William proposes to her under a CGI-enhanced African sunset.
It's no wonder British critics have panned the film.
"So bad it's awful, toe-curlingly, teeth-furringly, pillow-bitingly ghastly," wrote The Guardian's Stephen Bates, "it will probably be a smash."
"There are positives," said Richard Godwin, film critic for the London Evening Standard. "It is recognizably a film, in that it takes place on a screen. Events run in a forward direction."
He predicted that British viewers "will cherish it in ways its makers could scarcely have envisaged."
ABC News' Ellen Trumposky contributed reporting.
