The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star (2021)

November 24, 2021 1:32 PM

When a priceless relic is stolen, Queen Margaret and Princess Stacy enlist the help of Margaret's cousin Fiona teams with a man from her past to retrieve it, with romance and resulting in a very unexpected switch.

Previous discussion of this movie and the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe here.

posted by jenfullmoon (4 comments total)

Brief rundown of the plot: the royals are loaned a fancy Star of Peace from the Vatican, which is promptly stolen about six minutes into the movie. The police are totally incompetent and can't find ANY forensic evidence (?!?!) or leads, so the "twins" decide that the best way to find a criminal is to ask another criminal, which leads to Fiona being liberated from her island convent prison of public service.

Fiona in turn calls up her childhood friend/ex/former Interpol guy Peter, a total smouldering hottie with a strong resemblance to Henry Golding. Peter deduces in about a minute that the star has been stolen by another ex of Fiona's, a rich guy who likes to steal things he can't buy. This leads to a ripoff of the movie Entrapment and THREE different Fionas running around throughout the case.

Honestly, this was way better than I expected. Fiona's given some depth regarding her issues of being abandoned by her mother and how she abandons everyone else now. Peter is a delight and he and Fiona have amazing chemistry (far more than Vanessa Hudgens does with her other husbands). Vanessa Hudgens does a surprisingly good job of pretending to be one "twin" portraying another twin. It's totally Fiona's movie (literally).

Oh yeah, and there's a surprise cameo from another movie in the universe.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:37 PM on November 24, 2021

WHY isn’t Fiona’s mother played by Vanessa Hudgens??? Come on, missed opportunity.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:18 PM on November 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

At this rate, I'm looking forward to a future Princess Switch movie where all of the characters, every one of them, is played by Vanessa Hudgens. The plot will revolve around the actual Vanessa Hudgens (played by Vanessa Hudgens) needing to disappear for a while, but when the paparazzi discover her plans to hide out for the holidays on a tropical island, she needs to hire a Vanessa Hudgens impersonator (Fiona, it turns out) - who is unfortunately not available, and so Stacy has to step in, impersonating Fiona impersonating Vanessa Hudgens. The actual Vanessa Hudgens, of course, switches places with Margaret, who has to perform a concert as Vanessa, to a crowd of thousands of digitally inserted Vanessas Hudgens.

No one acknowledges that literally every other background and supporting character is played by Vanessa Hudgens. She is the only person to appear on screen, and the credits are a mile long.
posted by mrgoat at 12:29 PM on November 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

WHY isn’t Fiona’s mother played by Vanessa Hudgens???

ESPECIALLY since they seemed to make such a thing about NOT showing her mother's face in the flashbacks, and Margaret giving so little away about who she is (just "I haven't seen her in years" or something like that), it seemed obvious they were setting up some big reveal. The only other reasonable choice would have been Catherine Zeta-Jones given the Entrapment theme, but instead it was someone the internet tells me is Amanda Donohoe, who has definitely been in movies I've seen, but was I supposed to recognize her in a way relevant to the franchise when we finally did see her?

I guess instead all of that obfuscation was supposed to represent her past absenteeism, but to me it built an expectation it didn't deliver on.
posted by solotoro at 6:38 AM on December 26, 2021