Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) – Charming

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 11th August
Seen: 28th August

Not too long ago, I started making a spreadsheet. Not the most exciting thing in the world to begin a review with I’ll admit but I promise this is relevant because the spreadsheet takes every single film that has been reviewed on this blog and keeps track of how many LGBT characters are in it. Over the course of the last 6-7 years of writing reviews I have seen about 966 films, most of them fairly mainstream. Now obviously each year there has been some fluctuation but in total since the start of this blog, 36 of those films have featured a lesbian woman, 86 have featured a gay man, 23 had a bisexual in them and a whopping 24 had a trans person in them at some point.

Note that none of these numbers equals 10% of the films I’ve seen, having a film featuring a gay character or even being explicitly about the gay experience is still somewhat of a novelty because it doesn’t happen that often. Indeed, whenever you hear someone say “Oh they put LGBT people in everything now” just pull the list of films at your local cinema and ask that person to name all the gay characters and storylines in those films… enjoy watching idiots squirm. 

The point of bringing this up is that because it’s still somewhat uncommon for gay characters to be put into a mainstream film, a film that would be cliche if done by straight people now has something new to offer because of the gay content… this is why Red, White & Royal Blue is going to get such a huge pass for being a little cliche because it’s also not afraid to offer something that doesn’t get offered that much, an actual gay romance in a fairly mainstream film.

Red, White & Royal Blue presents a classic “two different worlds” scenario where the son of the US President, Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) has been tasked with representing the US at an event held in the UK by the Royal Family. In particular this means he has to interact with Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), a somewhat aloof prince who Alex has never really gotten along with. Of course, they have a bit of a tiff at the wedding which results in the wedding cake being destroyed and a mild PR nightmare being created which both the Oval Office and Royal Family agree can be sorted out with a press tour where both men try to give off the appearance of being friends. Due to the fact that this is a rom-com, naturally this attempt at a fake friendship ends up turning into a real relationship which is of course a little bit more than either side can handle because of tradition being against it so the two keep their relationship going in secret… at least, at first.

Let’s be clear, Red, White & Royal Blue has an incredibly basic rom-com plot. It’s Enemies To Lovers but with a coating of political intrigue and royal tradition and a lot of that could probably be done in any romcom you know, you probably know about a dozen that’re very similar BUT doing this plot with a gay couple does add some fascinating context. The main context being around the idea of royal tradition being a major factor in what prevents this couple from being public, the very real point that there’s never been a gay member of the British royal family before is a fascinating element to this. The world is kind of painfully aware of how the royal family handles people breaking with their tradition, there’s a literal Oprah interview detailing it and if that’s how they handled a straight couple we can make a guess how they might handle a gay one, it gives the story a little more weight than it might’ve had otherwise.

Also helping is that on the US side a big element of the story is that all this is happening around the time of a presidential reelection campaign so this relationship could become fodder for a ravenous press, a real fear that we see in the real world and is easy to imagine being done to a secret gay couple (imagine the field day Fox News would have with this kind of story). These elements give this secret romance some serious heft, forcing Red, White & Royal Blue to actually deal with some intense political issues surrounding how such relationships are treated and to the film’s credit it does touch on a fair few of those topics, actually bringing up political ideas and making them part of the plot instead of part of the background. It allows everything to feel a lot more real, even if the politics does eventually take a bit of a backburner to the romance.

It’s in the romance plot itself and specifically the interactions between Alex and Henry where Red, White & Royal Blue shines. There’s a chemistry that can only be described as palpable between the two leads and even when their dialogue is at its most cheesy and cliched they make it work. You buy into the relationship at every level, from the uncomfortable enemies to the slow burn into friends to a longing heartache that threatens to make both men crumble. It just works, it’s a relationship you instantly want to see work out and the two actors playing it do not hold back even a little. They both show off incredible comedic timing and an ability to sell the emotion of a scene with just a look, these are absolutely fantastic rom-com performances that do what’s needed to be done at the time.

Obviously Red, White & Royal Blue is going to lean on some cliches, it’s almost impossible not to be in this genre just because it’s been around so long and everyone is just copying off each other. Sure, there’s several scenes that feel like they could be in any other film, some of them are just so cheesy you can’t help but roll your eyes a little because every rom com does them… but they all do them for a reason, they work and it works here. The only thing that really makes this film different from the average romcom is the gay content, but that’s still a fairly big change because it doesn’t happen as often as it should. Gay people should have their own cheesy rom coms too and this is one of the better ones that’s come out.

Red, White and Royal Blue is cheesy, cliche and a little saccharine at times, following a well-worn plot idea that many others have done before… but it does it well, it does it damn well with enough charm and heart to make you smile for the entire runtime. Not every film needs to be some groundbreaking masterpiece that does something no one else has ever thought of before, sometimes you just want a good fun film with a cute romance that makes you go ‘Aww’ and this delivers that, but also joins a very small list of proudly queer rom-coms that we need more of. It’s the kind of film that needs to exist, there’s a lot of catching up to do and this is a huge step… plus, again, it’s just damn charming and that’s more than enough for this kind of film.