Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe at our usual time of “late”. Today, we’re revisiting the third installment of the Princess Switch series. Why? Because WHAT ELSE am I supposed to do in the holiday season? See Loved ones? Not this year, bucko. So back to Netflix we go, with a special guest to come.

A Quick Recap

If you didn’t read our reviews of The Princess Switch, and Princess Switch 2: Switched Again, here’s a recap of them, which will be MORE THOROUGH than the one the movie gives in its opening narration:

Stacey DeNovo, Chicago Baker, enters an international baking competition to spite her ex. While in the host country of Belgravia, she meets the Duchess of Montenaro, Margaret, and the two discover that, thanks to be being distant relatives, they are almost identical. The Duchess proposes an Undercover Boss situation: she’s supposed to marry the Prince of Belgravia, but she doesn’t REALLY know what the country and its people are like. She switches places with Stacey, since the Prince isn’t in town so there’s nothing important for Margaret to be doing for the next couple days, so she can secretly check out the country. But, surprise, the Prince comes back early. Stacey, playing Margaret, hits it off with the Prince, while Margaret, playing Stacey, hits it off with Stacey’s sous chef, Kevin. Hijink ensue, everything gets sorted out, and the Prince decides to marry Stacey instead of Margaret. Low-stakes all the way through, nice little time.

Polite Golf Claps all around.

Princess Switch 2: Switched Again picks up 2 years later, in presumably an alternate timeline where COVID didn’t happen, because no one acknowledges it either in this movie (which is explicitly set in at least 2020, if not later), OR Princess Switch 3. Kevin and Margaret have broken up, because Margaret is now set to inherit the throne, and is pulling the whole “I have to think of the good of the country”, routine. She and Stacey agree to switch again, so that Margaret can have a real heart-to-heart with Kevin. Meanwhile, the introduce the most interesting character in the series: Fiona Pembroke, Margaret’s party girl cousin who is running out of money, so she comes up with the brilliant idea of “I’ll impersonate my cousin long enough to be crowned queen, steal a bunch of money, and then flee the country.” She of course accidentally kidnaps STACEY impersonating Margaret. Margaret and Kevin reconcile, the group rescues Stacey, foil Fiona’s plan, and Margaret becomes queen, with Kevin as Royal Consort.

Like I’ve said before, all pretty standard stuff.

Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd

So, it’s the third film in the series, you’ve delivered happy endings for all your main characters. Where do you go for the Finale? Say it with me folks: “Redeem! Your! Villain!”

Bring in the Catholic Church! I want Cardinals, I want Nuns, I want a made-up Vatican relic!

That’s right, the third installment, “Romancing the Star” (which…weird title reference, but hey, you do you Netflix.) is about how a priceless Vatican relic, the Star of Peace, is stolen from Montenaro, and the group have to rely on Fiona and her connections with the criminal underworld to find and retrieve the star. This eventually leads to Fiona needing to be in two places, and then THREE places at once, leading to Margaret and Stacey to have to impersonate her for different audiences. It’s a fairly straight-forward movie, which…they do a really weird job of.

I’m going to come out and say it: of all three movies, this one feels, in some ways, the worst executed. There’s some decent stuff, don’t get me wrong, but the movie’s tone, themes, and pieces are all organized…weirdly, and there’s some sections that REALLY feel strained/ lazy. Like, here’s an example of an ‘easter egg’ in the film: when the movie starts, we see a fairy tale book open up as Stacey starts to tell us the basic events of the first two films. However, the TEXT of the page is different than what she’s saying…because it’s the first 4 paragraphs of the first film’s Wikipedia plot summary, copy-pasted.

Probably. Like, that text could be edited by the time you read this. Or don’t read it, since it’s too small, so you’ll have to go check it on Netflix.
(Also, I forgot to credit any of these pictures, and we’re already over a day late, so just assume all pictures that aren’t of cheese say “Netflix” on them.)

Here’s a more relevant example: Fiona gets called in because the police have no leads, and our 4 milquetoast former-main-characters believe her “connections to the criminal underworld” will be important to find what the police can’t. Which turns out to be partly true: she uses one of her connections to instantly get all the intel that the police and Interpol don’t have: how it was done, who did it, etc. But that connection is…her ex-boyfriend and former best friend Peter Maxwell, disgraced Interpol Agent turned private security mogul. So her connection to the criminal underworld is…a cop turned security guard. THEN, Peter’s research shows that the culprit is none other than, bum-bum-bum: her other ex, Hunter Cunard, hotel tycoon with a mania for acquiring what no one can have, secretly using his billions to steal priceless/irreplaceable pieces. And here’s the thing about that: Why did she need Peter to know that? Hunter is her ex-boyfriend. The combination to Hunter’s secret vault of stolen goods is HER BIRTHDAY. Like, why not have it be that Fiona knew that Hunter was the most likely culprit, they all acknowledge that trying to get a billionaire arrested on the testimony of a convicted criminal is unlikely to pan out in time to get the star for the celebrations, so then she has to go get Peter, because he’s the only person she knows that could overcome Hunter’s security system.

I’m going to make a suggestion that “dude who puts a basketball hoop OVER A FIREPLACE, and lays out a bunch of lit up technical displays on the edge of his indoor basketball court” reads better as “eccentric thief” than “consummate security professional”.

Hell, there’s a recurring unanswered point that Peter has insanely good knowledge of Hunter’s security, and Hunter makes at least one reference to Peter unprompted, so I thought the eventual reveal was going to be that Peter had BUILT the system and Hunter had cheated him, or was a rival thief of valuable goods or something, but…no. Peter isn’t that interesting of a character. His three main character traits, which at times feel like they wildly conflict with each other are: an air of hyper-competence and professionalism, a not-at-all concealed desire to reconnect with Fiona that fluctuates weirdly scene to scene, and an ongoing theme of trying to push Fiona to reconnect with her mother: Fiona, as the new main character, has extensive back-story added, where her mother was never there for her, leaving her at boarding schools at Christmas with Peter, where the two first bonded. Peter’s anger at his father for the abandonment has since been reconciled, having met with his father and hashed out their issues before the man’s passing, so he’s trying to ensure Fiona has a chance for that same kind of reconciliation.

Which…fine, all decent enough beats. But they don’t flow naturally, and they’re weirdly at odds. Like, Peter never gets to mix those impulses, or have them conflict in a real way. He’s the overwrought perfect secret boyfriend. Hell, spoilers for the two big twists of the movie: Peter seemingly betrays everyone, making off with the Star on his own, and setting up a secret meeting with Fiona…where it’s revealed that HE has brought her estranged mother, and used STEALING THE PRICELESS VATICAN ARTIFACT as leverage to get that meeting to happen. The two fight, HE announces, seemingly out of nowhere, that the two of them are done now…and then, in the last scene, TWIST, he’s at the party, where he is, and I’m not making this up, APOLOGIZING FOR GETTING MAD, because “I was mad at you because you didn’t care about me the way I care about you. But that’s not a good reason to be mad at someone, so-“. The man pulled the “you’re overreacting” card, ON HIMSELF, but did not acknowledge his controlling behavior. Though I will admit there was a funny moment where the first time he sees Margaret disguised as Fiona, standing next to Fiona, the actor makes a face that is, IMO, instantly hilarious.

That’s the face of a grown man having a surprising sexual awakening. “TWO of her?!”

So, yeah, there’s a lot of little issues with the movie. On the other hand, like I said, the movie has good bits. Vanessa Hudgens does some DYNAMITE choreo in this film, from multiple Tango dances, to a couple Entrapment-style sexy laser-beam dodging routines.

Though the sexiness does fall off a little when the finale is a “backflip” that just does not have the budget to hide that it’s CGI. (Specifically, composited in: she DOES a backflip, but it was clearly done somewhere else and added in later.)

While the story kind of sidelines all the leads from the first two films, the former male leads get some nice quips here and there, and what they do get to do is fine. (Kevin’s worried his daughter may not make it home for Christmas due to some winter storms messing up flights, but he’s supportive, and flirty, and generally a nice soft-boi consort. (Though this makes two movies in a row where a lot of Kevin’s arc is plane-centric.) Edward gets dumbed down a little, but is generally fine as a “well-meaning if slightly-out-of-touch royal”. Vanessa gets some nice acting beats again, as she has to play multiple versions of herself impersonating herself: Margaret’s version of Fiona is different than Stacey’s version of Fiona.  There’s a smattering of solid jokes, and bad jokes deliberately set up to be such…but there’s just a lot of weird hiccups, particularly in the way they seem to be striving to ensure that no one ‘on the good team’ is morally questionable: why doesn’t Fiona know about Hunter’s hobby of robbery? Because then she’d be a little more evil. Why isn’t Peter more upset about being ditched/a thief instead of a security guy? So he’s not a bad guy.

How can I accept that I think this couple should work unless I’m certain the guy isn’t a criminal? I demand my love stories be ethically pure.

Maybe the HEIGHT of this is the reconciliation with the mother. The meeting is…insanely vague. Like, the mother blames her absences on cruelty on the part of Fiona’s father, and proclaims she’s ALWAYS loved Fiona more than anything, but…where’s the evidence of that? it’d be one thing if Fiona had some big stack of “thinking of you” cards. Hell, do a reveal that the dad was hiding messages from Fiona’s mother. Instead, we just get Fiona talking about how hard she tried to be “good enough for you to love me” (which we are never shown, or even hinted at before now.), the mother apologizing, mom shows ONE keepsake she got years ago, yada yada.

The weird structure of the film almost gave me ANXIETY, because this film is like, 100 minutes long. (1:45, technically, but there’s an extended dance number in the credits), and the pacing was so uneven that I didn’t know where we were at any given moment. Like, the movie introduces the inciting incident in the first 5 minutes. Fiona is recruited by minute 11. The entire heist is basically done by minute 75…so where the hell are the next 30 minutes going to go? Is there about to be a giant twist? Does someone go to Jail? HOW IS THERE THIS MUCH MOVIE LEFT? (Turns out: for PATHOS, baby!)

But at the end of the day, I thought it was still fairly enjoyable. It’s schmaltzy nonsense, that’s a little too self-indulgent, but is that really all that much of a bad thing?

Oh yeah, thank you, Fiona!

SINCE last year we paired part 2 with Pirozhky, this year, let’s pair it with the wrap-up of the Cheese Advent Calendar! Does that make sense? Not really, without that one line to connect us, but I have already made clear that this film stretched the definition of sense, so why can’t I? Remember, I started this series because HALF of the main cast are BAKERS. So just say cheese, smile, and let’s get through this.

A Cheesy Conclusion

Quick overview: I did NOT keep up with the advent calendar through December, as I was too distracted handling other stuff. Instead, today, I went and unpacked the 15ish cheeses still in the box.

I then laid them all on the floor, because despite having a food handler’s card, in my personal life, I refuse to listen to it.

I then read all of the puns at once, had an aneurysm, and died.

No, I survived their assault on my sanity, and then ate the three cheeses I hadn’t tried yet. Here’s my take on them.

VINTAGE CHEDDAR

I’m pretty sure that A: something has to be more than 30 years old to be “vintage”, and B: If this cheese is going bad in a week, it’s probably not going to last that long.

I am confused by this one, because it is far too garlic-y to not be garlic flavored. Like, there Is a rich savory-ness/umami to the core of this cheese that I am CONVINCED this is mis-packaged garlic cheddar. If not, holy crap, dudes. This is like “Garlic Boursin” levels of garlic flavor.

AGED RED LEICESTER

I’m upset, because I thought up a caption for this about a song with “red” in it, and now all I can think of is “red red wine”. Which wasn’t it.
WAIT, Just remembered it. It was “Lady in Red”, and the joke was “Ag-ed in Red”.
…I don’t think that was worth it, now, but I challenge you to do better in the comments.

Eating this one, I do see where Chris’s confusion was with the burger application. Like, This tastes…weird. Not in a bad way, but in a “is this parmesan-studded cheddar?” way: there’s a sharpness in the back above the kind of cheddar-chalkiness. I assume with heat, it’d turn a little more rubbery, helping to push him toward Swiss.

CHEDDAR WITH ONION, SAGE, AND APPLE

“Jon, how did you get the order wrong when it was written in front of you?”
”It wasn’t written in front of me when I wrote the title, and I refuse to change.”

This one’s got a real onion-y smell when you pop it out of the plastic…Flavorwise…man, that is a TRIP. Like, the cheddar is almost gone. It’s like the bread in a holiday stuffing: a vessel for the herbs and flavorings. The sage pushes your mind to that same “stuffing” idea, with the savory onion flavor, and a little sweetness from the apple pulling you almost to flavor whiplash. I could understand if this is just too much for someone.

And  here are my top 3 puns.

What is Jay-Z’s Favorite cheese? Brie-yoncé.
Why should you always bring a bag of tortilla chips to a party? In Queso Emergency.
And, of course, the Hallouminati pun from the first post.

And that’s it! Join us Monday when I have no plan, I gotta figure out something this weekend, I’ll probably be real annoying to my family at dinner tonight. Bye!

MONDAY: I JUST SAID I DON’T KNOW.