Sometimes you just gotta mix it up. I would have been perfectly content with another forgettable 2 star Princess Switch movie with multiple Vanessa Hudgens’s falling in love for a third time. But here I am ready for some trite lightly funny twin switching humor, and all of a sudden, the creators zag. The zag, dare I say it, makes this the best of the trilogy, hopefully leading us to Princess Switch 4 where we find the Vanessa Hudgens cloning machine.
The movie smartly opens with a 5 minute recap: Princess Stacy Wyndham (Hudgens #1) is happily married to Prince Edward (Sam Palladio) of Belgravia. Lady Margaret Delacourt (Hudgens #2) is now Queen of neighboring Montenaro, married to Stacy’s former business partner Kevin (Nick Sagar). Margaret is showcasing a famous artifact, the “Star of Peace,” lent to her by the Vatican. However, days before the ceremony, the star is stolen, and the police have no leads. To not create an international scandal, Stacy and Margaret team up and recruit Margaret’s ex con cousin Fiona (Hudgens #3) to help find out what happened to the star on the down low.
The writers/directors of the previous Princess Switch movies rightly surmised that the idea had run its course unless they wanted to keep adding new Vanessa Hudgens’s. So the only way forward was obviously….turn the franchise into a heist movie?? Yes please! The heist concept allows the less interesting (read: not Vanessa Hudgens) characters to handle their “affairs of state” while Vanessa has a blast playing the different versions of herself, particularly the over the top fun Fiona. Thus, the flirtation and romance is part of the caper, as Fiona has to deal with a couple exes: Peter (Remy Hii) and Hunter (Will Kemp) while the other Hudgens’s cover for Fiona. There’s a jewel heist in Princess Switch 3 that’s better than the $200 million Red Notice in every way for clearly 1/10 or less of the budget. Of course the ending gets aggressively cheesy and swoony, but by then you’ve been so won over by the silly fun caper and Hudgens’s commitment to the bit that you go along for your Merry Christmas ending with stars, fireworks, and kisses.
As far as I’m concerned, Netflix should Marvelfy the Princess Switch series. Meaning: add 1 new Vanessa Hudgens per movie, and just switch the genre. Sci-fi next for PS4? Maybe animated dream sequence? I’m up for anything! We’re breaking free!