Red, White & Royal Blue and Zoey 102 – Movie Reviews

Heard some buzz for Red, White & Royal Blue on Twitter, so I thought I’d check it out. I had no real reason to; I didn’t think it looked all that interesting to me, and no one in it made me interested in the project. So to my surprise, I found it to be decently enjoyable. Is it one of the Best Movies of the Year? No, but it’s certainly far from the worst. It feels very much like a charming Hallmark film; it has its staple moments of cheese and forced plots. But that’s just what streaming movies are for the most part — they are the endearing TV movies that probably get forgotten the day after they’re seen.

Let’s start with what I liked in Red, White & Royal Blue. Firstly, I thought Nicholas Galitzine was pretty great in his role. He fit in well and brought some good conflict to the movie. I also think the main romance is pretty well-developed and had some well-constructed tension with fun highs and lows. I also think the period aesthetic makes the movie just that much more enjoyable with some great settings and locations.

Taylor Zakhar Perez was pretty good; he was your standard Hallmark charming lead who does a good enough job. Uma Thurman was baffling to me, but I still ended up liking her by the end, weirdly enough. The movie is bizarre and has a look of quirky or over-the-top explanations and resolutions to things. It can be a real stretch, but sometimes it’s easy to suspend your disbelief, and it certainly was for this movie.

Red, White & Royal Blue is not amazing by any means, but it’s cute enough. It’s like a step above Disney Original, and it crosses some lines that I don’t think a typical Hallmark movie would. It is going to be interesting to see if this movie can find the right crowd, but it seems to be doing pretty okay with that as is.

‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ Rating – 3/5

Follow Billy (the Author) on IG – @teen.reviews.movies

None of these Nickelodeon reunions have really impressed me that much. I couldn’t stand the First Season of the iCarly revival, and haven’t even bothered watching the next two. At least they decided to make the Zoey 101 revival into a movie, rather than dragging it out. While not as awful as the iCarly reboot, Zoey 102 is pretty unremarkable. It can accomplish a couple of effective feats, like examining the lost glimmers of joy of those that peaked in high school. Aside from that, this is a TV movie in every sense.

Most of the main cast makes their return, and after fifteen years their acting has not improved. Almost every single performance in this movie is just so amateur, but then again I can’t really call these people actors. A lot of them have moved on to pursue their own passions in life, until they were called upon to return in this lame revival.

Like iCarly, Zoey 102 tries to show how these characters have matured by incorporating swear words and a lot of drinking. However, it’s not actually mature by presenting themes or indication of development from the characters. Pathologically, these characters appear to be stunted in their behavioral growth since we last saw them. I don’t see a point of bringing back this series in a movie if we don’t gain a sense of personal growth and realism that could make this story so much more interesting. It was fine when we were kids, but those days are long gone.

The newest Nickelodeon reunion of Zoey 102 is not much beyond nostalgia-bait, but it can’t even accomplish that. Lacking of the charm and fantasy of the original series, I would rather have this story capped off with the last episode from fifteen years ago.

‘Zoey 102’ Rating – 2/5

Follow Zach (the Author) on IG – @pretentiousfilmcritic

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