Red, White, and Royal Blue 🇺🇸❤️🇬🇧

It’s been quite a while since I have been excited about a movie’s release. I’ve been excited for television shows, mainly Star Trek shows on Paramount+, but not many movie releases get me excited these days. However, I have been anticipating the movie Red, White, and Royal Blue since I read the book and heard they were making it into a movie. I’ll be honest, I was a little skeptical about the movie being made by Amazon’s Prime Video, but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially once I saw the trailer for the film. As with any book adaptation, I was also worried they’d would completely screw the whole thing up, but again, the trailer made it seem that it was keeping mostly to the story in the book. However, I have learned over the years that a book can be great and the movie can also be great without being completely compatible with the book. 

I’ve read Red, White, and Royal Blue several times. When I don’t have a new audiobook to listen to, I have a few standbys that will go back and listen to again. Red, White, and Royal Blue is one of those books, therefore I am very familiar with the storyline. Also, I read it again this week in anticipation of todays release of the movie, which by the way was actually released at 8:00 pm ET last night. I finished the book on my way home yesterday, and at 8 o’clock, I was in front of my TV with a bowl of popcorn. I enjoyed the movie. As with most adaptations, they combined some characters, removed or changed others, and tightened up the story some. The audiobook is over 12 hours long. There had to be some judicious editing to make it a two hour long movie.

I’m not completely happy with all the sacrifices the movie made. A few of my favorite scenes from the book are not in the movie. However, I do think they did a great job of keeping the meat of the story there. There will be people who really love this book that are not going to be happy with the changes made, but I’ll forgive the movie for that. It was a good, entertaining, and enjoyable movie, and I’ll probably watch it again (maybe even today). I’ve gotten into the habit of watching something new all the way through once, and if I really enjoyed it, I’ll watch it again because there is always something that I missed the first time.

So, what did I like about the movie? Taylor Zakhar Perez as Alex Claremont-Diaz, the first son, and Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Henry were very well cast. I think they captured the energy and the personalities of the two main characters. The sex scenes were pretty damn hot, and quite honestly, these were not gratuitous sex scenes because the passion and horniness of two guys in their early twenties is a major part of the book.  Think they captured that as well. Alex and Henry are the main protagonists, and everyone else in the movie were basically window dressing. The other standout is Sarah Shahi as Zahra, who has great lines in the book and the movie. I also liked Aneesh Sheth as Alex’s Secret Service an agent Amy. Sheth doesn’t have as big of a part as Shahi, but I felt like she stole the scenes she was in, which almost makes up for her not being portrayed as a transgender woman.

I have three criticism I’ll make of the movie, though there are other things I could say good and bad. However, Uma Thurman as the first female president and from Texas is one of the weakest parts of the movie, and Thurman is almost unrecognizable in my opinion. She looked terrible, not the more sophisticated and well put together woman I felt she was in the book. She does have some good moments though. I can forgive the movie makers for combining the characters of Alex’s sister June and his best friend Nora into just Nora, but when they removed Rafael Luna and Henry’s mother Princess Catherine, I think they did the film a major injustice.

As I said, overall, I enjoyed the movie and will watch it again. I’d give it 4.5/5 stars. If you watch it, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you’ve also read the book and watched the movie, let me know what you thought of the adaptation.