Movie Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue

Red, White, and Royal Blue... The Movie

Red, White, and Royal Blue (the movie)

1.5/5 stars LOL

A review for the movie adaptation of Red, White, and Royal Blue by Cassey Mcquiston.

Establishing my Ethos

In high school, we learned the importance of establishing your ethos, your credibility, in all my english classes. Before I get into trashing this movie, I felt like it was important for me to lay out my resume and explain why I’m qualified to speak so severely on this topic. I read Red, White, and Royal Blue, by Cassey McQuiston, in 2021. I remember my first read like it was yesterday. As soon as I finished it, I restarted it, as I tend to do with most of my books. Since then, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the book because it’s probably over ten at this point. So as someone who has read the book at least 10 times in the past two years, I’d say I’m a certified RWRB historian. Now that you trust me, let’s get into the review.

A soft summary if you’ve never heard of the book

Red, White, and Royal Blue is a queer love story between the first female President of the United State’s son and the Queen of England’s grandson. Alex (22), the FSOTUS, is finishing his last year at Georgetown and is preparing to embark on a life of being a politician. Both his parents are politicians and his plan for his whole life was to follow in their footsteps. Alex has an older sister June who lives in the White House with him and their mother. Their parents are divorced. Alex has a very straight hate crush on Henry (23), The Prince of England, who is the darling of England. Henry has an older sister Bea and older brother Philip. He is handsome and respectful, and Alex despises how put together he is. At Prince Philip’s wedding, Alex and Henry have a drunken little tiff and in a very cliche way, end up knocking the wedding cake over. To save face and make it seem like a cute little accident, Alex and Henry are forced to visit each other at different events to prove to the media that they don’t hate each other. As all romances go, their friendship buds into something a little more than international affairs. If this summary makes you want to read the book, then read the book and come back to my review afterward because it’s filled with spoilers. And do not, I mean do not, watch the movie instead.

Introduction to RWRB

Red, White, and Royal Blue has been my favorite comfort read since the first time I read it. It still offers this sense of comfort and softness that I crave when I reread a book. The characters are familiar and endearing and they blend well with the heart-wrenching storyline of the book. It has just enough plot mixed with mindless romance so that I can read it over and over again and still pick up on things I missed from my previous read.

What I love the most about this book is all the small details that make the characters seem three-dimensional and real. McQuiston didn't skate over any characters and didn't mince any of her words. Every character, from our main ones to the background ones, has depth and personalities that a lot of authors tend to miss. I didn’t feel like any character was unnecessary or just used as a filler. Every description was thought out and went deeper than one paragraph. The focus she paid to her characters helped create a strong plot line that you don’t always see in romance novels.

As fluffy and cliche as this book is, it does what it needs to do. It sinks its claws into your heart and simply does not let go, which is why you'd think the movie would do the same thing. You'd think the movie would do the characters justice and make you fall in love just like you did with them in the book, right?

Casting

I knew the movie wouldn't live up to my expectations as soon as the cast was released. RWRB had some big shoes to fill after the roaring success of Heartstopper, a queer drama series based on a graphic novel. Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman, did everything RWRB did not. She cast age-appropriate actors that fit the roles as if Oseman wrote the characters for them. The cast, as a plus, was also filled with openly queer actors.

When the casting for RWRB was released, my first thought was that they picked the hottest actors they could find. It didn't matter their age or if they fit the role, all that mattered was if the actor would look good on a movie screen. This goes for the entire cast. I think the only person that was successfully cast was Zahra.

Nicholas Galitzine, who played Henry, and Taylor Zakhar Perez, who played Alex, are not new to acting and each has successful films under their belts. They're good actors, which is why it's so obvious they weren't fit for these roles. It wasn't that their acting was bad, it was that they weren't meant to play these characters. I recently saw the movie Bottoms, and I think it's safe to say Galitzine literally stole the show. He was fabulous and fit his character extremely well.

As soon as the movie started, I felt like both Galitzine and Perez were 1) too old for the role, and 2), didn’t embody the spirits of the characters.

I felt that age was important to the characters because Alex is graduating and trying to figure out what he wants to do next and Henry is also figuring out out. Alex turns 22 in the book and Henry turns 23. Galzetine is 29 and Perez is a whopping 31. There is a scene where Alex curls up on a couch with his mom in the movie, and it looks so uncomfortable because it’s a 31-year-old man curled up next to his mom.

I don’t want to get too into the sexualities of either actor, but casting actors for queer roles is difficult. For a long time, the queer community has been demanding better representation in queer media. No more straight actors pretending to be gay for a role. Give the jobs to the queer actors. Neither actor has ever spoken in depth about their sexualities, which leaves me wishing a little that the characters were played by more openly queer actors. I think having actors who can speak about their experience when playing a role instead of avoiding the question does a lot for a movie and its audience.

Though the casting was a problem for me, it wasn't even close to being my main problem. My main problem was how this movie cut out every piece of detail McQuiston wrote into her book. Her writing was filled with soft moments between our characters and we simply do not get that in the book.

Character Changes

I want to talk about the changes in Henry and Alex's characters. As I mentioned earlier, McQuiston included so many specific details about each character in the book, and I felt like the movie did a bad job illustrating all the aspects of every character. First, they kind of wrote out Henry's depression and anxiety, which felt like such a major exclusion. Early on we learn Henry struggles with depression and it’s a pretty big plot line throughout the book. His depression and identity issues gave the reader a lot of insight into Henry, and they really just cut all of that out in the movie. It also was weird because there were moments where they sort of kept his anxiety, like when Henry is clearly not okay after the scandal, but by never mentioning it in the first place, it sort of doesn't make a lot of sense. For Alex's character, I didn't like how he basically had no coming-out journey. It sort of just happened and that took away a lot from Alex. Something I think they did very well with Alex was his humor and personality. He’s very flippant and sarcastic in the books, and he’s similar to that in the movie.

Moving away from Alex and Henry, I think cutting out June, Alex's older sister, was the worst decision in the world. I really don't know who said that that was okay. Cutting out June not only changed Alex's character, it changed the whole dynamic between Alex and Nora. No longer were they the Golden Trio. Instead, they were two best friends who seemed to not have that much chemistry. Without June's character, we lost so many emotional and fluffy scenes between the three.

I just don't get why they cut her character but then included other characters like Pez or Bea. It felt stupid to include their characters because they had no dimension or characterization. Both characters felt like extras with names. Bea played such a significant role in the book as Henry's only ally in the royal family, and they completely wrote that out. We only saw Bea a handful of times in the movie and her character did not reflect the Bea from the books. Similarly, Pez was such an exciting and eccentric character in the books, but in the movie, he was simply a hot guy we saw every once in a while. He barely had any lines and didn’t have any of the characteristics book Pez had. It felt weird to include these two characters who didn’t do play a role in the plot, but exclude June, who would’ve added to the story.

I was also disappointed with Nora's character. Despite her having a stronger characterization in the movie, her character just didn't feel like Nora from the book. Movie Nora was extremely put together and classy. She had a job with the campaign and popped in randomly to give Alex advice. Book Nora was a queer, nerdy character that seemed to be all over the place. She was smart and also a huge part of Alex's sexuality journey. In the movie, they completely wrote out her queer storyline, which felt so WEIRD to do in literally a queer movie. She's supposed to help Alex through his coming out with her own experiences, but instead, the movie has her seeming straight. They seriously dropped the ball on her. There’s a scene in the book where Alex goes to her for help about his sexuality because she also is. The scene they replaced it with felt a lot less significant.

The final character I’ll touch on here is Henry’s mother. In the book, Henry’s dad dies when he’s young, which is a huge thing Henry struggles with. Once his dad dies, Henry’s mother kind of goes distant but comes back in the end to help Henry when he’s outed. This was just another detail that helped define Henry that didn’t exist in the movie.

By changing all the characters and focusing mostly on Alex and Henry, the movie lost a lot of its depth and plot. The book has a lot of smaller storylines and themes flowing with the main plot, but the movie follows one strict plot with nothing else. I felt like it moved EXTREMELY fast and jumped from major scene to major scene. I understand that they were trying to fit everything into one, two-hour movie, but without any transitions and comfort scenes, the movie felt erratic and jumpy.

Plot changes

There were also a lot of changes to the plot and storyline. First of all, having the president not be divorced felt unnecessary. It was another weird change the producers decided on that seemed so dumb. The divorce was a big factor in Alex's life and taking it out really changed his character. Multiple scenes in the book were dependent on the divorce, so by removing that detail, it ultimately changed a lot of scenes. This, on top of making him an only child, seemed to really make him almost a new character. Being an only child of happily married parents creates a very different kid compared to someone with divorced parents and a sister. They weren’t minor details to Alex’s character, so I found it really odd to take them out.

I also HATED, and when I say hated, I mean abhorred, the exclusion of Rafael Luna and replacing him with that stupid reporter. I simply do not understand why they felt the need to change that plotline. In the book, having Luna leave the campaign was so significant because of how much Alex looked up to him and idolized him. It made the situation matter so much more because he was a part of Alex's life. By replacing him with the reporter, it made the outing feel less personal. It also just felt unrealistic to have this random man suddenly pop into Alex's life and start ambushing him. In the book, having him be outed by the republican campaign makes more sense and having Rafael be the one to discover it has so much more significance.

This also changes the whole scene where Henry surprises Alex at a hotel in New York. That scene is supposed to be Henry being there for Alex in a vulnerable time because it was announced Luna was joining the republican campaign, but instead, the scene literally held no significance by taking out that detail. All of these changes they made seemed to negatively impact all the significant parts of the book.

Some tiny things that annoyed me were the intimate scenes. They changed the sex scenes to different locations. Alex and Henry have sex sex for the first time after the karaoke bar. The Paris trip is a big deal for Alex in the books because it's the first time they share a bed overnight. In the book, Alex constantly has this internal debate about sleeping overnight with Henry, so the Paris trip signifies a shift in their relationship. I know these changes don't do much to the plot, but it felt like the movie erased all the small details McQuiston worked so hard to add to the book.

Another thing was how they ruined the karaoke bar scene. That scene is supposed to be the best scene in the book. It's supposed to be a moment of friendship and love and being young. Instead, it’s shortened, rushed over, and completely lacks all of the emotion the scene holds in the book.

Final statements

My main problem with the movie is not that they made so many changes, it's that they made so many UNNECESSARY changes. Honestly, it felt like the producers didn't even care to keep the movie similar to the book. Daisy Jones and the Six's adaptation proves how changes can be made, but the adaptation can still carry the messages and vibe of the book.

I don't want to sound like an asshole for hating on this movie, but I guess I'm just so disappointed that the movie did absolutely no justice to this book I've loved for so long.

There are so many small changes I could point out, but I know it’s unrealistic to think they could include every little detail. I understand that things were going to be changed and left out.

Overall, I gave this movie two different ratings. Firstly, I rated the movie without considering the book and looked at it as if it was a fresh new movie with a plot I’d never heard of. Going based on that, it gets:

3/5 stars

However, considering that it is a book adaptation and that it’s based on a book, I gave it:

1.5/5 stars... sorry not sorry....

P.S.

Some EXTREMELY minor differences, exclusions, etc. that I noticed that don't really matter but made me upset:

- Cash was excluded

- Liam and that whole storyline was excluded

- Alex barely had any bi panic

- Henry's freak out in Texas took place during the day instead of at night (which just realistically made no sense)

- The whole Texas campaign problem and fight plot was dumb

- Bea is younger like why?

- The whole Texas politics montage was stupid