Red, White & Royal Blue
“Red, White & Royal Blue continues a bias for a certain type of queer presentation.”
Title: Red, White & Royal Blue (2023)
Director: Matthew López 👨🏽🇺🇸🌈
Writers: Screenplay by Matthew López 👨🏽🇺🇸🌈 and Ted Malawer 👨🏼🇺🇸🌈, based on the novel by Casey McQuiston 🧑🏼🇺🇸🌈
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 3/5
We’re ringing in the holiday season early this year! If you’re a purveyor of Hallmark and other straight-to-streaming winter rom-coms, you’ll feel right at home in Prime Video’s Red, White & Royal Blue. That is, if you like your holiday sweetness with a side of Bridgerton-style heat.
Based on the novel by Casey McQuiston, playwright Matthew López’s feature debut draws on the director’s theater background. Although the story is fluffy, light, and fun, attributes of a stage play sneak in: Sequences are drawn out and parked in place—here’s the Mom scene, the Lake scene, the Museum scene, and so on. Blocking feels overly designed, too deliberate to bother with naturalism. (When revelers dance to “Get Low,” the crowd drops down to a crouch as the two love interests stay upright, staring meaningfully at each other from across the room.) And the editing in between feels choppy and rushed, as if turning out the lights to set up the next plot point.
That said, I recognize that it’s silly to dissect the technical prowess of a streaming rom-com. More importantly: Are the actors and production values glossy enough to warrant a sense of escapism? Yes! Main couple Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the U.S. president’s outgoing son, and England’s reserved Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) share sizzling, believable chemistry. The script they’re forced to read can be corny as hell, but Perez and Galitzine gamely meet the challenge with appealing earnestness.
Gender: 3.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
You’ll find no surprises in this trope-heavy romance, and that extends to any depth of character beyond its main couple. But by the numbers, women can be found in plenty of supporting roles. President Ellen Claremont’s (Uma Thurman!) reelection campaign sets the stage for much of the film’s drama. Alex’s friend Nora Holleran (Rachel Hilson) reprises her role as a bisexual man’s bestie (see: Love, Victor). And Chief of Staff Zahra Bankston (Sarah Shahi) wins laugh lines when she catches Alex and Prince Henry in flagrante, verbally destroying them for complicating her job of keeping President Claremont’s campaign scandal-free.
Sure, these women all have flat characterizations and they don’t interact much. But when they do, the film easily passes the Bechdel Test, thanks to a roster of women who talk about political strategy and work. Furthermore, the original Red, White & Royal Blue was penned by nonbinary author McQuiston. These attributes go some way towards achieving gender balance, if not parity, within the film.
Race: 3.75/5
Discussions of racial identity sit far from the film’s core interests, but people of color do make up a sizable part of the cast. For starters, main character Alex is biracial with Mexican heritage, played by Perez who’s multiracial (Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Mexican). His father Oscar is played by the talented Clifton Collins Jr., who’s German-Mexican American. In smaller roles, Nora (played by multiracial actor Hilson) and Zahra (Shahi, Iranian-Spanish) round out the supporting cast.
But the racial diversity can feel superficial, and everyone in main or supporting roles have light to medium skin tones. The movie easily subscribes to Eurocentric ideals of beauty, with Henry’s Whiteness and privilege played up as some of his sexiest traits. During the prince’s participation in a charity polo match, shots of him riding a horse in preppy breeches and equestrian boots rev Alex’s engine, the two busting into a nearby shed to have sex. And it’s clear that the ostentatious displays of British royal wealth are meant to give this film a fairytale patina.
In a frustrating turn, the film’s main villain is journalist Miguel Ramos (Juan Castano, who’s multiracial with Colombian ancestry). The character speaks to Alex in Spanish for a handful of lines, emphasizing his Hispanic background, even as he’s presented in a deeply unflattering light. Miguel embodies smarminess, an ever-present smirk on his face as he delivers sexual innuendo and thinly veiled invitations for sex that make Alex visibly uncomfortable. While it does help that there’s a Latiné director behind the lens—López is Puerto Rican, originally from Florida—it’s hard not to notice the contrast between Alex’s lukewarm, sometimes annoyed reactions to the interested Latino journalist versus how quickly the president’s son fixates on, then falls for, the blonde-haired, hazel-eyed prince of England.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +1.00
López, co-writer Ted Malawer, and nonbinary author McQuiston are all openly queer. It’s wonderful to see these storytellers get the chance to helm a buzzy rom-com. This inclusiveness extends to the actors, as López tells Buzzfeed, "[the cast is] filled with people who identify in various ways, or choose not to publicly identify at all. There are also queer actors playing straight roles too."
Onscreen, Red, White & Royal Blue uses familiar gay tropes. Critic Richard Lawson calls out the film as being “a masc-for-masc love story about two jockish hard bodies”—a summation that applies to, let’s be honest, the majority of gay films that have been produced for mainstream audiences. (Hello to last year’s Bros and Fire Island.) This bias for a certain type of queer presentation is only emphasized by the villainization of Miguel, who’s slightly more femme than either Alex or Prince Henry.
On the flipside, López’s movie does break ground in other ways. Writer Evan Ross Katz posts, “I scoffed when I read GQ headlines calling the sex scenes ‘quietly radical,’ but having now seen the film, I get it and I do agree! Those legs were up and folded back and the breathwork was giving! … President Uma Thurman (!) with a Texas drawl (!!) telling her bisexual son to take PrEP and get the HPV vaccine (!!!).”
In short, Red, White & Royal Blue won’t be smashing down every single barrier in queer representation, but it doesn’t have to. Instead, its quiet work producing onscreen discussions of bottoming, bisexuality, and safe sex is plenty, and it’s up to the next ten, twenty queer YA rom-coms (let’s hope!) to keep pushing the envelope.
Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.75/5
Slickly produced, romantic, and horny, López’s Red, White & Royal Blue does a serviceable job of adapting McQuiston’s beloved novel. Though its melodramatic tendencies and cheesy humor aren’t for everyone, it’s hard not to enjoy the chemistry between Perez and Galitzine and the glamor of their high-profile romance.
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