The Prince and the President's Son

I just watched Matthew Lopez’s Red White and Royal Blue (2023), the adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s novel about the son of an American President falling in love with a Prince of the United Kingdom. I won’t begrudge the kilig. Kilig is so rare these days, so I’ll take it from anywhere I can. [Plus, Greg Berlanti produced this!] I like that this film tested my expectations. Like, why did I expect Uma Thurman’s President Ellen Claremont to go nuclear if she finds out about her son’s gay dalliance with the prince, only to be given a nurturing scene where mother bonds with son? Was that patriarchal heteronormativity having conditioned me to only expect disappointments with gay romance? Don’t we deserve our own happy-ended fairy tales? It is an aspirational film, made for our times, and my skepticism knows it holds no water over anything that dreams of a romance like this.