Movie Review: Red, White & Royal Blue
The classic book to movie pipeline has struck once again taking form in Red, White & Royal Blue. Following the massive success author Casey McQuiston had from the original release of the book in 2019. Her story takes the genre of romantic comedy with an added modern spin. The progressive story’s main relationship sports a LGBTQ relationship between the main characters Alexander Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) First son of the United States and Henry (Nicholas Galitizine) Prince of England.
**Warning: Spoilers Ahead for Book and Movie**
The Amazon Prime movie adaption of McQuiston’s novel sat at #2 in the United States for Prime Video streamers during its release weekend. However, there are some notable differences from the original book to director Matthew López’s interpretation but readers everywhere should be happy to know that the overall story remained untouched.
One of the bigger changes was that Alex Claremont- Diaz’s parents Madam President of the United States Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman) and Senator Oscar Diaz (Clifton Collins Jr.) were not divorced as they were in the book but rather still together in the movie.
A creative change made by López noted in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “Oscar being still married to Ellen is cleaner storytelling for the movie. It’s just one fewer character for the audience to have to deal with. And personally, I was really drawn to the notion of showing a Latino father who is still with his family. I really wanted to show a Mexican American father who is still with his family. I needed that family unit to be intact for the movie.”
The movie also goes onto the identity struggle of the First Son of the United States but not in the way you might think. Rather the movie takes a second to acknowledge the pressure and responsibility he feels as someone of a Latino background in politics.
In a scene focusing on the blossoming relationship at hand Alex delivers the line when speaking to Henry saying, “You may not understand this but in America, if you’re an immigrant with a ‘Z’ in your last name, there aren’t many people in positions of power that look like you or sound like you” closing the conversation with “I’ve been given the chance to be someone in the world my father didn’t get to see when he was growing up.”
Although this story is set in a world of fiction this story works to address real world issues like Latino representation and taboos surrounding the LGBT community continuing the conversation though it’s different mediums of film and literature.
