Sometimes I love a commoner to royal story. Sometimes, I am reluctant to watch them because they rarely surprise me. They feel predictable and somewhat repetitive. The thing is though, when you have Andrew Walker starring in something, I am going to watch. Unfortunately, even Andrew Walker couldn’t save The Reluctant Royal from being the most basic of basic royal movies.
THE GIST
It’s definitely not something that I say easily, because I tend to love Andrew Walker movies. Yet, not all of his movies feel like they looked up bad fan fiction and tried to make it into something good.
Harsh? Maybe. Johnny Payne (Walker) is living in Pennyslvania. He’s a commitment phobe Mama’s boy with some serious Daddy issues. His idea of a good time is karaoke and using power tools. He loves attention, but the attention that he got when a prim and proper english woman walks into the bar.
She’s there to offer him a first class plane ticket to meet his father. His father, who is a Duke, is summoning him. He’s put off by the whole interaction, until his Mom tells him that he should go and meet his father.
Meanwhile, his father has invited some pompus cousin to the castle, as he’s in line to succeed. The Duke feels that he’s getting too old and he wants to step down. Prudence, his advisor, is determined to not let that happen. So, as Johnny shows up, she’s determined to teach him all the ways that he needs to change in order to become a Duke.
When he wants to leave, she convinces him to stay for the week and come to the ball. He reluctantly does, but it’s mostly because he’s got a crush – on her.
The second cousin, Alistair, who will take over if Johnny doesn’t accept his role. Alistair wants to do everything that he can to get rid of Johnny, and he almost succeeds.
But turns out all Alistair did was set everyone on the road of figuring out the truth and setting Johnny taking over the Duke position and coming up with plans to turn everything around.
OVERALL
How? How would he turn everything around? Well, that would be juice. Which if we’re being honest, I had to wonder if a Little West bottle would come out of nowhere. I like Little West, so no shade intended. To people who drink beet juice though, kudos. Hard pass.
The highlight of this movie was Emilie de Ravin, who shined as Prudence. She reminded me that women are always in charge – even when someone tries to think that they aren’t. She’s managed to make everyone think twice, assert herself where needed, and guide the men in her life to get where they needed to be.
The movie feels like I am supposed to invested, I just wanted. I was invested in it being over. I wanted to love it, but what I felt versus what I wanted – well, lets just say that was a let down. The Reluctant Royal played it too safe.
