RECOMMENDED: The Princess Switch
Forget Infinity Wars. The Princess Switch is the best movie of 2018.
Admittedly, it's also the only new movie I've watched in 2018, so it had exactly zero competition in my brain. But sometimes, we just need a wonderfully terrible movie, and The Princess Switch is absolutely perfect for that. It's one of those rare movies that provides ample opportunity for you and your friends to give a snark running commentary, while still being genuinely enjoyable and loveable at heart.
It's terrible, and it's amazing. It's a million romantic cliches bundled up in festive spirit, and that just makes it so happy. If you had a list of "favorite fluffy fanfic tropes," this would tick every one of the boxes.
The Princess Switch is about a young bakery owner, who is still getting over her last bad breakup and works with her lovely best friend who is secretly in love with her. When she gets the opportunity to compete in a festive baking competition in a fictional snowy European kingdom, she meets her body double, a duchess who is engaged to a near stranger, the prince, and wants to learn more about the people she'll be ruling. They swap roles for two days, and while our protagonist meets and falls in love with the prince, buying Christmas gifts for orphans and riding horses in the snow, the duchess spends the festive season with that pining best friend and his adorable daughter, and falls for him too.
Everything about the movie is predictable. It promises you happiness and fuzzy feelings and cute baking, and it delivers. No twists, no challenge. Just festive cuteness, easily resolved angst, and people getting engaged like Disney characters, after knowing each other for three days. It even has a mysterious man who may or may not be Santa Claus in disguise, guiding our protagonists towards happiness. It's about as cute and silly as movies come. And it's exactly what my heart needed.
Sometimes it seems like because the world is serious, we have to always be serious too. We have to watch grim and gritty shows that challenge us and put their protagonists through extreme angst in the name of drama. And you know what? Forget that nonsense. It's Christmas. I want a fake festive Great British Bake-off, and princesses and horses and duets on the piano. I want a cute romance about royalty and baking that ends exactly as happily as you would expect, and lets you just forget about all the stress and nonsense for a while.
If you're looking for a movie that has a deeper meaning, or even a movie that makes complete sense, The Princess Switch is not the one for you. But if you're someone, like me, who finds loves the festive season but maybe finds Christmas itself a bit hard sometimes, this movie is the perfect cosy pick-me-up.