Tis the season for all things corny and deeply unserious, and that is exactly what the Princess Switch trilogy is. Bad CGI, Vanessa Hudgens featuring Vanessa Hudgens with Vanessa Hudgens, and a tonal combo of dramedy/action/spy thriller/international mystery = this franchise has it all. And I’m obsessed.
This relationship began when myself and my best friend Abby (the Netflix Christmas aficionado to my Hallmark/GAC scholar) initiated a holiday movie night with our friends last year. Crammed into her dorm, five people to a Twin XL bed, amidst snack bags and sherpa blankets, I discovered something absurdly beautiful: just how fun these movies are.
For those who are unfamiliar with this piece of cultural canon, let me elaborate: these three Netflix original holiday movies center star Vanessa Hudgens (queen of Coachella who once said “I mean, people are gonna die”) as three women who look identical and once they discover each other’s existence, they utilize their likeness to switch places and live each other’s lives to solve various problems.
Vanessa #1 is Stacy, a baker from Chicago, #2 is Duchess Margaret Delacourt of the fictional Montonaro, and #3 is Fiona Pembroke, a distant cousin of Margaret’s and heiress with expensive taste and devious motives. Their respective love interests are Prince Edward of Belgravia (once engaged to Margaret but fell in love with Stacy on accident while the first two women had switched places, keep up y’all), Kevin Richards (also baker from Chicago, insanely hot in turtlenecks, falls in love with Margaret on accident– you get the gist) and Peter Maxwell, security analyst and sexy criminal.
Amidst all this insanity, to the untrained eye this series may not present much appeal. To me personally, between the Hallmark and Lifetime fodder, Netflix original holiday films tend to stand out; there’s a tiny bit more creativity or deviation from the norm, and their casts seem to be oddly niche to my watch history and mine only. Plus, the difference in the Princess Switch franchise is that the jokes are actually pretty funny, the performances are endearing, the budget is budgeting and they have Vanessa Hudgens for some serious viewership pull.
Beyond the candy-coated filter of fictional diplomacy and perfectly laid laces, this series unpacks the depths of celebrity, duty, success and balance. In a way of subverting the “stressed business woman returns to hometown to find calm in rural life”, Margaret escapes the royal expectations set for her in the first film by submerging herself into working class life for a day or two. Stacy progresses her business and achieves her full potential as a leader by marrying up — literally bagging a prince by stealing him from a duchess. Fiona gets her jail sentence commuted, heals her generational trauma and anxious attachment style, AND gets the man of her dreams all with a little bit of disguise, backflipping and one bleach-blonde bubble ponytail! There’s probably some shoddy class politics in there, but there’s something to be said for the fact that romance is secondary to the swirling plots that engage these three women with one another as they expand their families, careers and horizons.
However, as I said, these movies are so unserious! One of my favorite moments in the third film (the best, hands down) is when Fiona does a backflip over military grade security lasers after executing flawless sensual floorwork (there are splits and backbends) to reach Peter in a spy montage for the ages. Please observe (please please watch this video if there’s one thing you do after reading this newsletter).
The continued bit of Fiona’s evil minions, Mindy and Reggie, is also hysterical. They add slight comedic influences here and there, and make a great trio with Frank, Edward’s butler/valet/footman/indiscernible staff position. But the funniest thing of all, genuinely the plot to end all plots, is Edward’s involuntary celibacy in his own marriage.
At the top of the second movie, Edward and Stacy have been happily wed for almost a year. Stacy is the ultimate career wife, and Edward is a somewhat ceremonial figurehead. When she is stressed and languishing over the state of Kevin and Margaret’s romance, Edward BEGS to “relax her”, inviting her to come to bed, light a fire, open a bottle of wine, it goes on and on! And yet! At every possible turn, because she is just so busy and just so disinterested in him, Stacy will not bed him! It takes the entire rest of the film for them to kiss in a passionate reunion after she is kidnapped, and even then they are interrupted by an Archbishop. You can’t make this stuff up, but Edward’s constant abandoned-puppy-dog-dude-who-is-always-out-of-the-loop act is surprisingly working for him, and kind of…never mind.
These movies are somewhat like my favorite tv show, The Royals, to me in that not only are they an inside joke to myself and my friends, but I genuinely love the story and want everyone in the whole wide world to know the joy of these films. They present simple fun in a world that needs it, so if you do — you know where to tune in this holiday season.