Lorem Ipsum

I watched the movie Red, White & Royal Blue last night, and enjoyed it a lot.

It’s a romcom. Sweet and funny and a bit larger-than-life, with no particular uncertainty about how it’s going to turn out. But I enjoy that sort of thing when it’s done well, as it is here.

(Content warning for dead parents as part of character backstory.)

I saw one review that criticized the movie for being implausible; I suspect that that reviewer doesn’t watch (or doesn’t like) romcoms, ’cause this seemed to me to be no more implausible than any other romcom in the romance-with-famous-people subgenre.

I saw another review that criticized the movie for leaving out a bunch of stuff that was in the book; that’s fair, but as someone who hasn’t yet read the book, I didn’t feel like anything was missing. (Well, okay, there was one development early on that felt a little rushed to me, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the book took a bit longer to get to that point; but I didn’t feel like it was a significant problem.)

I’m not saying there are no legitimate reasons to dislike it. But for me, it was one of my favorite movies I’ve seen this year.

Here’s an NPR interview with director Matthew López (from August). Includes spoilers for the movie.

Among other things, López says: “I'm a queer Latine, biracial son of the South, and so is [one of the movie’s main characters].”