Red White & Royal Blue (Prime Video)
Rating: ** ½
There is a fundamental problem with two extremely good looking men, one from the British royalty and the the son of the American president(no less!), falling in love.
They cannot be seen as representing the LGBT community. And this is not the queer romance that shows the marginalized community as an anxious breed of persecuted people seeking an identity.
Red White & Royal Blue kicks all the boxes. Debutant director Matthew Lopez couldn’t care less about political correctness. His two heroes are obscenely privileged people and insanely goodlooking, and this is the pink version of Romeo & Juliet with the Montagues and Capulets on the same(super privileged)side.
So what is the problem between these two smitten studs? The political careers of their respective parents, one being a British prince the other being the American president’s son played by Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez. They play their cards with the arrogant modesty that comes naturally to those who have nothing to lose.
This is the privileged kingdom of over-protected scions with a wildly distinguished pedigree. They fall for each other with a lifesize cake falling with them, and covering them in cream. That’s as hard as their ‘struggles’ to stay together get. When Alex Claremont Diza, played by an actor who shares the three-tier name protocol with his characters, tell his mother the President of America(Uma Thurman, sadly listless) that he is…ummmm….gay and in love with the British royal lad,President Mama doesn’t bat an eyelid. She cuddles her son and tells him all will be fine.
But will it? Don’t forget this is a fairy tale , in more ways than one. Alex and Henry are surrounded and buffered by the most incredible support system. The President’s son’s best friend is Nora(Rachel Hillson) a black American woman also the daughter of the vice president of America.
Poor Henry in Britain seems to have no confidantes. But he seems happy living in the lap of luxury until Alex(a bisexual, to be noted) arrives as a supplement lap to luxury. The climax has the Brits cheering as Henry and Alex wave from the balcony of the Buckingham Palace.
What happened to the royal lineage disapproving of homosexuality?This giddyheaded liberalism does no service to the miseries of the LBGTQ community.
Everything is rosily liberal here: the American President is a woman(Hillary Clinton, if she had won), the Vice President is Black, the British Prime Minister is black and a woman, and Sara Shahi of Iranian descendent plays the deputy chief of staff of the American president.
If only the real world was as ideal, gay would mean happy.