Were they even trying with the sequel title or is it supposed to be an homage to Die Hard 2: Die Harder? Doesn’t matter. I’m just going to be blunt, THE PRINCESS SWITCH: SWITCHED AGAIN aka The Princess Switch 2 suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkssss. Awful. Abysmal. About a billion lazy story/script choices, the fake CGI snow is fucking distracting, Vanessa Hudgens new 3rd character is on the spectrum bad, and many other nitpicks that would make this review about 5 pages long. Not going to do that. This movie doesn’t deserve to be talked about that much. This is one of the most unnecessary sequels of all time and nobody involved in this movie is trying to hide that this was a blatant greedy cash grab. I never reviewed the first movie on this Word Press blog, and while it wasn’t the greatest little take on The Prince and the Pauper story that I’ve seen, it was cute enough and serviceable, mainly because of Vanessa Hudgens performance. When she plays wholesome characters, her acting shines…and that’s mainly because she isn’t so wholesome in real life…just look at her almost NSFW social media pages…especially Instagram. Also do you remember earlier this year when COVID-19 started spreading and killing people? Do you remember that she was caught on an Instagram story saying, “well like…people die, ya know?” and a bunch of other questionable comments about the state of the world at that time? I ‘member. But this critique is not going to go into how much of an attention whore, sleazy sexual person and kind of dummy that Ms. Hudgens (and her sister Stella) seem to be in real life, this critique is all about this abomination of a sequel that she got a producer credit on, because “Look at me! I funded money to a project! Look at me! LOOK AT MY GOD DAMN NAME IN THE CREDITS BECAUSE I WANT GOD DAMN CREDIT AND ATTENTION!!!”
IMDB describes the movie with the following: “When Duchess Margaret unexpectedly inherits the throne to Montenaro and hits a rough patch with Kevin, it’s up to her double Stacy to save the day before a new lookalike, party girl Fiona foils their plans.” To take that into context, let’s go ahead and see what IMDB described the first movie as, since I never reviewed it: “Competing in a Christmas baking competition in Belgravia, a Chicago baker bumps into the prince’s fiancée–who looks just like her. They switch lives for two days.” As you can tell, this stretches the Prince and the Pauper story line past the point of it being coherent anymore. I get sequel prospects but did we really need Hudgens getting more money to play a third character, one that I have a feeling acts like she does in real life? The only thing nice I have to say about it is that the shots of two or all three Hudgens in the same frame were decent. And the set decoration is nice. But really? They couldn’t get a fucking snow machine for the outside shots and instead every fucking flake of God forsaken snow is CGI, with barely any of it actually hitting said actors on screen and if a flake happens to “land” on one of the characters, it slowly CGI melts off? Come on, that’s just lazy bullshit film making. Hudgens is a producer now, make her cough up the extra cash for a physical snow maker. Other than Hudgens, who does actually seem to be trying and seems like she wants to be there, (I’ll even give her props for having a dialect coach on set every step of the way to help her with her accents, which are considerably better and less cringe worthy than the first film) every other actor/actress looks like they want to kill themselves for being in this sequel, or they don’t care and over act to just get the shit over with and grab a paycheck at the end.
And then we come to my biggest nit pick with the whole movie: the screenwriters didn’t have anything for the Prince, that ends up marrying Stacy at the end of the first movie, to do so they blatantly don’t tell his character about the new switch for three reasons:
- If they told him the switch was going to happen, the rest of the dumb movie probably wouldn’t have happened. THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO LOGICAL REASON NOT TO TELL HIM!
- They needed more scenes of the Prince’s character, and the little girl Olivia character (Kevin’s daughter) because the actor and actress were probably paid a good sum of money for the sequel and they didn’t want to waste the both of them. (Olivia knows about the switch but this little girl is tasked to make sure that this PRINCE OF AN ENTIRE FUCKING COUNTRY doesn’t find out. How does he just travel with her with no God damn body guards, does that even make a lick of fucking sense?)
- To reiterate 1st reason: BECAUSE MOVIE NEEDED TO HAPPEN.
Speaking of Olivia, the young actress from the first movie was replaced even though the movie takes place two years after the events of the first movie and the first movie is only two years old. There couldn’t have been an aging concern then, so I’m guessing the original young actress knew what a stinker this one was going to be and hi-tailed it out of there. Smart move kid. The plot of this movie is unnecessary, boring, and stupid. The climax and outcome is unnecessary, boring, and stupid. And the 3rd character that Hudgens plays is unnecessary, boring, and stupid. I mean, need I say more? My recommendation is that if you’ve watched the first movie, do not even think about giving this piece of shit a try, instead, switch gears and maybe pick up a book and read The Prince and the Pauper. Your brain will thank you for it.
Zach's Zany Movie Reviews 