Out of Christmas, and into New Year’s! A Royal New Year’s Eve to be exact. So let’s dive into this gem, starring a blonde girl, some American guy who is sporting a majorly fake British accent, and Cheryl Ladd. It’s New Year’s Eve, and anything is possible!
Caitlyn is a receptionist at a fashion magazine, but she wants to be a fashion designer, and her Sassy Friend is telling her to show her designs to her boss, Abigail Miller (Cheryl Ladd) who is a big Scrooge, but whatever. Cheryl Ladd has a daughter who is a designer, and CL is just pushing the daughter’s designs, and has no time for anything else.
Lady Isabelle and Prince Jeffrey are one of the hottest royal couples, and they are going to be at Abigail and her daughter’s upcoming fashion show. Rumor is that Prince Jeffrey (PJ for now and for ever) will be proposing on New Year’s Eve. They are in town to have a New Year’s Eve Ball. Oh, and Lady Isabelle is a brunette. Why is it that all the anti-heroines are brunette?
Caitlyn and PJ have a meet cute in the lobby, as Caitlyn mistakes PJ for a regular messenger, and doesn’t realize who he is. And, as that is exactly what PJ wanted (I just want to be plain Jeff, not Prince Jeffrey), he’s mildly intrigued by the feisty blonde.
Cheryl Ladd volunteers to help with the Royal Ball charity event, and during the fashion show party, his shoulder collides with a tray of shrimp cocktail. So he’s sans jacket when he meets Caitlyn again, and he keeps up the charade of being a model/cater waiter and Caitlyn is nice to him. She’s all dressed up in one of her very own designs, and Lady Isabelle loves it, much to the chagrin of Cheryl Ladd, who wanted Lady I to wear one of her daughter’s designs! Curses!
PJ finds Caitlyn’s phone. They’re gonna meet up. PJ also likes the idea of being a ‘reg’lar guy’ now and then. Yeah, let me just tell you, PJ, it’s not that great. My washing machine is not working well right now. Can royalty get on that?
Again, another unbelievable apartment shared by Caitlyn and Sassy Friend (a.k.a. Doris). Sassy Friend is pushing PJ and Caitlyn to have coffee. That’s what Sassy Friends do. But after they leave, Sassy Friend realizes that “Jeff” is actually PJ! She’s hyperventilating.
PJ apparently is from a small country in Europe that no one has heard of. Is it close to Lichtenstein? I bet it is! And now it’s all hit the fan, as Isabelle and Jeffrey converge on the sidewalk together, and Caitlyn finds out that he’s the Prince of this small country, where he is expected to pop the question at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, to symbolize a new beginning, or something. Whatever, that sounds boring.
There is a commercial for MagicBax earring backs, so that earrings sit upright where they should. Who has these problems with earrings? Why did someone invest in something this dumb?
Lady Isabelle loves one of Caitlyn’s designs. She actually seems very nice.
Cheryl Ladd on the other hand, is being a total bitch, and is loading up Caitlyn with work on the Prince’s New Year’s Eve party to stop her from sewing Isabelle’s dress. It’s so Cinderella’s Stepmother, but Caitlyn has her own form of magic mice, in the form of Sassy Friend! Her daughter, whose designs Isabelle should be wearing, doesn’t seem so fussed, so I can only imagine what sort of mental anguish backstory Cheryl Ladd had to invent in order to play this type of character.
Caitlyn pushes a hot dog on the prince instead of the fancy food that she’s supposed to be working on for the party. PJ loves is Royal Foundation, and Caitlyn is the first person to basically encourage him to talk about it (Lady I doesn’t care, even if she seems nice), and so PJ is liking our blonde designer.
Caitlyn says fashion is expressing who we are on the inside by what we wear on the outside. I’m currently in jeans and a cardigan with thick socks on. What does that say about me, internally?
Cheryl Ladd planted enough doubt in Lady I’s mind about Caitlyn’s ability to make her dress, and she’s upset enough to give Caitlyn a brief hint about being a distraction to Jeffrey. Sassy Friend is doing all the sewing on the dress, as Cheryl Ladd is making Caitlyn’s life crazy.
Sassy Friend and Jeffrey’s man Barnaby have a moment.
This movie is doing a very good job of making Canada look like New York. It’s one of the better ones, actually. Even if the building where Cheryl Ladd’s office is has a street sign that says “Fashion Ave” but the building itself says 777 Dunsmuir. I googled. It’s in Vancouver.
PJ and Caitlyn continue to bond over all sorts of stuff. He says his dad is going to step down as king, and PJ has to become king, but only if he gets married first. And she asks, “What do you want?” and he has that face of ‘yeah, I know what I want, but am I man enough to grab it?’ Methinks he will in about 40 more minutes.
Cheryl Ladd shows up and snaps a few pictures of the dress. She’s gonna do something seriously shady with those! (And with the magic of photoshop, she’s going to say that Caitlyn copied the dress from someone else). Cheryl Ladd’s daughter is being really stand up about it, but you know that Cheryl Ladd is totally gonna back out of her promise not to be a bitch. She just needs a cape and a mustache at this point.
Barnaby is trying to Yoda PJ into picking Caitlyn, and while he admits that Caitlyn is “the one,” he won’t act out of his own desires if it means that something could get messed up in his kingdom. Which is a very adult way of dealing with it, I guess, but not what we want in a Hallmark movie. But what does happen is that Lady I overhears him say that! So she calls PJ’s Dad.
Caitlyn is thinking that being around PJ is getting hard, because he’s going to marry someone else. And then PJ and Lady I have a genuinely interesting conversation, where Lady I says that PJ is gonna be king, and he needs someone who knows that life, and not someone who believes in fairy tales. And they say that they care about each other, and PJ asks the very pointed question, “Why don’t we ever say that we love one another?” Lady I has no answer. But she looks very uncomfortable. She knows her days are numbered!
PJ’s Dad shows up at Caitlyn’s door. So I guess Lady I’s phone call made an impact. King Dad wants to know if Jeffrey likes Caitlyn. It’s like they’re all in 7th grade, passing notes in study hall. Caitlyn reassures King Dad about the fact that Jeffrey will propose to Lady I. But King Dad is impressed by her, nonetheless.
Cheryl Ladd just swooped in with a newspaper showing the photoshopped picture of Caitlyn’s dress, so it’s not an original anymore! Lady I doesn’t want it. She stole Caitlyn’s thunder, Lady I is going to wear a very boring purple satin dress, and Caitlyn got fired. But now PJ has finally stepped in, and tells Lady I that he’s not going to ask her to marry him. He totally broke up with her, because no one should have to settle, not even royalty.
Barnaby tracks Caitlyn down in a coffee shop and they have a heart to heart about PJ. He had written her a “good-bye” note, but Barnaby gives her an invitation to the ball instead, because Barnaby is a total softie and wants his boy PJ to be happy. She actually says she doesn’t have anything to wear, but duh, she’s going to wear that pretty pink dress she designed for Lady I.
King Dad is ok with PJ liking Caitlyn. What a nice King Dad! Lady I isn’t wearing the ugly purple satin dress, so screw you, Cheryl Ladd!
Caitlyn shows up at the ball. The dress is pretty. So much better than that one in A Princess for Christmas, right? And we have the requisite stairway moment.
Everything is fine at the end. Because it’s a fairy tale, and of course we have to end happily ever after, even if they just decide to date each other like normal people before getting married, unlike A Christmas Prince, where dude proposes in the snow after he knew her for, like, a week, and most of the time she was lying to him. But that’s another story, one with which I apparently still have issues. But that’s my own thing. I’ll get over it.
So this movie had it all. Cinderella. Fake British people. Lots of talk about dresses. Canadian New York. And even though it was a New Year’s Eve movie, there still were about 5 Christmas trees shown in different scenes, so it’s like an easy transition away from the Christmas movies into just stuff about winter. Hallmark is really coming through to chase the winter blues away, so I’m psyched about what is going to fill my DVR this month. I’ll watch them all, just so you don’t have to.
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