Red, White & Roy­al Blue review – Uma Thur­man steals the show

In the Inter­net age there has always been one uni­ver­sal truth: boys kiss­ing will always be cute. Be it gifs, porn, or the chaste hand-hold­ing of the Heart­stop­per boys, you put a boy in love with anoth­er boy front and cen­tre, and the girls and the gays will come run­ning. That is exact­ly what Red, White & Roy­al Blue – Matthew López’s adap­ta­tion of Casey McQuiston’s Book­Tok best­seller – is bank­ing on. Before the main titles have even kicked in, Red, White & Roy­al Blue has essen­tial­ly skipped the ​‘ene­mies’ part of its ene­mies-to-lovers arc, and placed its lovesick twunks firm­ly on the path to romance.

Despite the twee title and the YA source mate­r­i­al, it’s a fun time at the movies, and López, a play­wright and unlike­ly choice for direc­tor (giv­en his last major cre­ative endeav­our was the six-hour-long AIDS play ​‘The Inher­i­tance’), is in on the joke. McQuiston’s book is both pre­scient and deeply entrenched in the past – it’s a gay romance set against the back­drop of the elec­tion of the Unit­ed States’ first female Pres­i­dent while, in the same breath, jol­ly old Eng­land is a tea-and-crum­pets land of cas­tles, princes and polo. Red, White & Roy­al Blue is utter­ly divorced from any kind of recog­nis­able real­i­ty, but it allows you to enjoy it as an immense­ly sil­ly rom­com, cut from the same cloth as those gay Hall­mark Christ­mas movies.

The film fol­lows the book’s goofy, Princess Diaries-esque set-up: Alex (Tay­lor Zakhar Perez), the con­fi­dent, high­ly ambi­tious son of the first female POTUS (Uma Thur­man!) finds him­self in diplo­mat­ic hot water after a pub­lic brawl with Prince Hen­ry (Nicholas Gal­itzine), the British roy­al family’s prim ​‘spare’, and the pair are forced into feign­ing cama­raderie to sal­vage the Spe­cial Rela­tion­ship. It takes about ten sec­onds before the pair fall mad­ly in love and start fly­ing between nations on pri­vate jets fund­ed by your hard-earned tax­es to have sex.

Where McQuiston’s text relied on pure car­i­ca­ture, López and Malaw­er add a touch more depth to the char­ac­ters. Zakhar Perez and Gal­itzine are bet­ter com­ic foils than they are love inter­ests but it’s easy to buy into their uncom­pli­cat­ed romance. It’s clear that a gay man direct­ed it too, as Alex and Henry’s sex life is han­dled sen­si­tive­ly – some­thing a lot of oth­er gay rom­coms have had a sur­pris­ing amount of trou­ble with.

Like those oth­er gay rom­coms – Hap­pi­est Sea­son, Fire Island and most recent­ly, Bros – Red, White & Roy­al Blue will have its haters and defend­ers. It’s still a glossy, cin­e­mat­ic ver­sion of queer­ness, and its weight­i­er themes – that of celebri­ty and being trapped in a gild­ed cage on both sides of the Atlantic – nev­er feel all that weighty because they’re just so fan­ci­ful. No one, per­haps with the excep­tion of Meghan Markle or the Oba­ma daugh­ters, will be able to relate.

I am ulti­mate­ly bury­ing the lede because while the ini­tial draw for Red, White & Roy­al Blue might be hot boys kiss­ing, the real star of the show is Uma Thurman’s stratos­pher­i­cal­ly high-camp per­for­mance as Alex’s moth­er. With a slurred Benoit Blanc-ish drawl to rival Sien­na Miller​’s and a weird, almost stoned lethar­gy, Thur­man deliv­ers some mag­nif­i­cent line read­ings. She looks checked out most of the time and her deci­sion to play the US Pres­i­dent with a kind of loose-limbed apa­thy is an incred­i­ble act­ing choice that reminds you that Uma Thur­man needs to be cast in more things. The film’s ener­gy flags when she isn’t on screen to ram­ble about elec­tion strate­gies or ask her son if he’s ​“bot­tom­ing”.

There is some­thing strange­ly com­fort­ing about Red, White & Roy­al Blue, as imper­fect as it is. It’s a rom­com for the stream­ing era but it has a marked­ly dif­fer­ent vibe to it because it’s front­ed by two men. To draw on recent Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry, it feels like an improved ver­sion of Love, Simon, with the same ano­dyne love-is-love pol­i­tics but a lit­tle slut­ti­er and a lot more roman­tic. I’m scep­ti­cal that Hol­ly­wood will ever be capa­ble of mak­ing a gay rom­com that isn’t twee or heavy-hand­ed in some way, but Red, White & Roy­al Blue feels like a ten­ta­tive step in the right direction.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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