Though the movie adaptation sheds some original plot points, it leans into the same crackling horniness that pulled us all in to begin with.
By Yiming Fu
Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine as Alex and Henry / photo: Amazon Prime Video
I first read Red White & Royal Blue in secret. It was July of 2020, I had just graduated high school and was lazing around in my COVID-summer doldrums. I had no school, no work, no summer plans. So I did what every burnt out high school student tries to do — read for fun again.
I settled on a gay British-American enemies to lovers slow-burn that put the Boston Tea Party to shame.
Casey McQuinton’s salacious novel about England’s seemingly uptight royal prince falling for the U.S. President’s thot son has captivated more than 100,000 readers since it hit shelves in 2019. And the highly-stanned book has newly made its way to film. Directed by Matthew López for Prime Video, the movie has topped the site’s charts since its August 11 release. Widely believed to be based on a The Social Network fan-fiction between Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, the movie has spawned endless memes, including one viral Tweet about whether gay men can have sex in missionary, and another about the couple’s condom usage.
I practically ran the Red White & Royal Blue fan club, and the movie was years in the making for me. I saved every clip of fanart I could find, read endless discussion threads on Reddit and consumed every scrap of content that brought the words alive. I wanted, so badly for the American first son Alex (Taylor Zakhar Perez) and British crown prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) to be real.
Beyond the internet, however, I didn’t want anyone to know I had read the book. Red, White & Royal Blue was the first book that really showed me what it meant to be so humblingly down bad that you don’t know what to do with yourself. Alex and Henry are some of the horniest characters in all of YA fiction, and their fiery enemies to lovers quarrels sizzle right off the page. The many sex scenes were written so vividly it bordered on smut. I was so scandalized, thrilled, and jaw-dropped that I refused to put the book down. The pure desperation and unfiltered gay horniness was the book’s secret sauce for me. And the movie doesn’t disappoint in that regard.
After scandalously toppling a $75,000 royal wedding cake in London, the smug and sarcastic Alex and the seemingly uptight Henry are under orders to be best friends for the press. But the public relations circuit goes a little better than expected. The two are shoved into a custodial closet after an unexpected bomb threat and have a brief, but sweet, heart to heart. When Alex returns to the States, Henry starts pestering him on WhatsApp. “You always pose with your right hand in your pocket,” Henry writes, “Are you having a wank?”
This cues a horrendously down-bad 40-minute long sequence of pure infatuation. We get the classic late night texts and phone calls where you just can’t seem to hang up. We get a Christmas party crackling with sexual tension, a thirst-fueled polo match that shows us Henry’s ass thwapping up and down on a horse before the pair make out in a stable, followed by an initially-awkward-then-sweet nighttime fuck in Paris. This all leads up to a daringly down bad hookup when Henry flies out to visit Alex on the campaign trail — and gets caught. With very international implications.
I could argue that the movie does very little successfully. Did the giddy romance suddenly make me believe in love again? No. Was I in tears giggling at the quick humor and well-timed jokes? No. Did I have a single critical thought while watching? I fear not. But the nonsense of it all is what makes it shine. You have two horny commitment-scared young adults who are desperately trying to make things work. And oh dear…that’s real life.
In an interview with Variety, director Matthew López said he wanted to focus the movie on Alex and Henry and how their relationship builds over time. “It was born of my decision to cast actors who are older than the characters who were in the book,” says López. “I really wanted there to be some genuine stakes and gravity for these characters. If they were too young, you could just explain this away as puppy love. I wanted this movie to be about that first real romance of your life, the first real love affair, the first real love.”
While we do lose a lot of the nail-biting election-year plot of the original novel, as well as a couple characters from the original cast, I was more than happy to see Alex and Henry ogle at each other for two hours. And I liked seeing the characters wrestling less with sexuality and coming out and more with what they’re going to do with the horrifyingly real feeling of falling in love.
As a rising senior in college, watching the movie three years after reading the book is bittersweet. I get to remember the young and hopeful version of myself who clung onto every word of Red White & Royal Blue as the template for all the sexy, messy and hilarious love stories that I thought awaited me. I get to remember the version of myself that had never been in a relationship, but was ready to start college, make my own choices, and pine over a forbidden man.
While in these past three years I may not have fallen in love with a prince, I did learn what it means to be strongly down bad. And I’m so glad to have a gay movie in this world that leans so heavily into that feeling, even if it accomplishes little else. Because there is absolutely nothing wrong with watching some really hot gay people do some really stupid things — and come out okay in the end.
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