Hatewatch tip: The Princess Switch 2

Sometimes you just really don't feel like watching a good movie. No Oscar material for me. No, just something light where your brain doesn't matter at all and you end up feeling pretty good because these kinds of movies always have a happy ending. No exceptions. Now I watched The Holidate last week and I found it... Spicy. A bit too much, every now and then. But overall I give it a passing grade on the easy-to-watch scale and it's definitely entertaining enough.

But then I didn't know yet that I could go too far with this. Because I thought it was time for such a movie again last night and then I chose the new The Princess Switch: Switched Again. Now I had already seen part one and knew it wasn't of a tremendously high quality, but I knew it could get by. Anyway, I have a weakness for Vanessa Hudgens since High School Musical, so she can't do much wrong in my eyes. Or so I thought. Because this is quite a different story, that second part.

Let me start by saying that I had to get used to it and had to pause a few times to figure out which movie I was actually in. What it was a sequel to. Because Vanessa brings along multiple Christmas movies and that is confusing, also because there are all British and American accents in those Christmas movies. So when she talked about her husband, I thought: hey, there you have that knight. But no, wrong movie. Okay, FOCUS.

That focusing went okay, because the concept is super simple. Where there were two Vanessas in the first part, there are now three. Isn't that a bit too much? Oh definitely. And no matter how much I have a weakness for Vanessa, if three of the main roles are played by her, it's really too much. And she can't act that well either, let's be honest...

The third character is named Fiona, and she is a niece of queen-to-be Margaret. And — you wouldn't expect it — she is after the throne. To do this, she gets involved in the switch that American Stacey does with Margaret, to save her relationship. So they switch between those two, and Fiona also gets involved, which they don't know. In short, it's all quite confusing. It just comes down to the fact that there are three Vanessas running around.

Fiona is a bitchy girl and thinks she can pass herself off as Margaret, because she also had an Ariana Grande phase and that went well. Does that have anything to do with each other? I don't quite see it, but her minions think the argument is good enough and support her.

What is both a plus and a minus is that from second one you can already see that it ends well. That's part of it, but you're not really surprised anywhere. I'm mainly busy separating the Vanessas. That they switch in combination with all those bad British accents: it was a bit too much for me. There are limits and this was a bit too much of the bad for me.

But hey, A Knight Before Christmas part two? Then I'm definitely in again. I'm not giving up on you, Vanessa. We're all in this together. Don't worry.

Image: Netflix