‘The Royal Treatment’ (2022) Review: Netflix’s New Progressive Fairytale
The Royal Treatment, a new feature centred around a commoner who meets a prince, infuses music with fairytales. Gone are the days of the handsome prince rescuing the damsel in distress. In Rick Jacobson’s new movie, hairstylist Izzy (Laura Marano) styles Thomas (Mena Massoud), a prince from a fictional land called Lavinia, for his engagement party. Soon, she finds herself and her two friends Destiny (Chelsie Preston Crayford) and Lola (Grace Bentley-Tsibuah) in Lavinia to style everyone’s hair for the wedding. Izzy and Thomas find themselves tangled up in newfound friendship and sparks fly. Now, Thomas must figure out if he wants to get married to please his parents or follow his heart.
The downside of The Royal Treatment is that there are characters that seem out of place and underdeveloped. Doug (Jay Simon), Izzy’s landlord, only appears in two scenes in the movie.
The dialogue is another problem — the writers assume that the audience lacks comprehensive abilities, so they spoon-feed to the audience. Perhaps this is because the movie is targeted towards pre-teens. Even with these flaws, the movie still treats Izzy and the other female characters in a positive tone and comments on injustices and gentrification in Izzy’s neighbourhood in Brooklyn.
Throughout the movie, Izzy and Lauren (Phoenix Connelly) don’t compete for Thomas, which is admirable. Instead, they complement and treat each other with respect, and it seems like Lauren feels the same way about the marriage as Thomas. Although The Royal Treatment is not the first movie to portray female characters without being catty or negative, it is enlightening to see this kind of portrayal on-screen.
Marano and Massoud’s performances are endearing enough for young audiences to watch. The flaws in The Royal Treatment makes up for how charming and charismatic they are together. Jacobson’s movie is neither realistic nor an excellently written or structured movie. However, The Royal Treatment ends on an enchanting note. The internal and external conflicts are solved at the end of the movie, and what matters most for Izzy and Thomas is the journey they were on together. Through Izzy, Thomas learnt the importance of standing up for himself and his parents, which included helping the people on the other side of tracks who were often neglected by his parents. The Royal Treatment might be a standard movie but the moral of the movie is aiming for the betterment of other people.
