Once upon a time, the third installment of The Christmas Prince was released on Netflix. In this installment we follow King Richard and the newly crowned Queen Amber as they prepare to bring their first born child into the world.

In the previous two installments (“A Christmas Prince” and “A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding”), I’ve always found Rose Mclver, who plays Amber, to be a bad actor. Everyone else made their roles seem believable and like a real person- Mclver’s character always felt robotic and was similar to the acting in a middle school play. However, I was thoroughly impressed with her acting this time around. Amber suddenly felt real. Amber now had feelings and she discovered how to express them in a way that doesn’t come of as sociopathic.

The new “royal” haircut she adorned made me laugh, but in a weird way it worked for the new queen. It put a physical emphasis on her character growth and how she changed through the movies.

Towards the beginning, they introduced King Tai and Queen Ming of Penglia who were there to sign a peace treaty. I was a fan of Kevin Shen (who played King Tai) and Momo Yeung (who played Queen Ming). You were always uncertain about their true intentions being there, which added a sense of depth to the cheesy Christmas movie. I enjoyed being able to see the relationship between Amber and Ming grow as she teaches Amber about motherhood. As well as on the flip side, seeing King Richard and Tai’s relationship grow as Richard learns the best way to be a father. There were definitely cute moments between the four of them that had me secretly smiling.

What I’ve always loved about this series is the cinematic shots. However, in this installment, there were a handful of moments where a camera would cut and there would be a character missing in the background. It makes the film itself look unprofessional, while putting emphasis on the fact that they didn’t have a script supervisor to make sure everything was where it should be when the cameras cut and switch angles. Either that, or they didn’t have a really good script supervisor. 

There was a lot of potential that could have been used with Amber being a journalist. However, she acted more as a private investigator and a wannabe-influence/ blogger. Although she may be queen and has a right to have a blog, posting pictures of your newborn and calling it journalism is simply ridiculous. Now, it is state mandated to call any Karen who uploads 50 of the same pictures of her gross child on Facebook is now considered a journalist. Congrats on the promotion sis!

The worst part about this entire movie was that I wanted to hate it. I really did. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely some cringey scenes that I had to exit the app, take a couple of breaths, maybe scream or watch something else, before I went back into it.  But as the movie progressed, I found myself actually enjoying the movie and laughing as it went along.