[Regular readers may recall that of a weekend I usually brighten the internet by reviewing a fantasy and/or horror movie. Whether the subject of this post qualifies as such I leave to others to decide.]
Recently I have drawn some stick (yea, even from my nearest and dearest) for my determination not to watch the You-Know-What, an obsession with which is currently blighting the public life of our great nation. Thank God I don’t have to work today; viewing the proceedings has been written into the schedule and time-and-a-half is, frankly, not enough to make that worth my while. (In case you’re wondering, I spent the day watching the Ding-Trump snooker semi.)
Do not misunderstand me. I am wholly agnostic on the whole Monarchy/Republic issue, and, of course, I wish the couple all the best. I just don’t want to watch the damn wedding and feel rather insulted by the assumption that I do. (The last wedding I went to featured belly dancing, a Brezhnev impersonator, twenty drunken Kazakhs and boiled sheep’s intestines for everyone, so I can’t really imagine this one measuring up anyway.) The Tory press and major broadcasters who’ve been going on and on and on about it in such a mindlessly chirpy way can all sod off, please, and take every inch of bunting and plastic union flag with them when they go.
However I decided to sit down and watch Mark Rosman’s William & Kate: The Movie, partly because I thought it might be cathartic, partly because I had a terrible desire to see something utterly lacking in any merit whatsoever. Well, having done so, the obvious thing to say is ‘HWEEEAAA-EEEE-AAAAA-EEEEEEEE-AAAAAAAAAARRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!’ but I feel this may not fully communicate everything which makes this American TV movie so special.
Wills is the one on the left, in case you were wondering.
Tasteful opening shots of Olde England lead to our being introduced to Wills (Nico Evers-Swindell), a likeable and well-meaning galoot who’s the scion of a gaggle of nutty old inbreds. ‘I can’t believe you’re all grown up,’ marvels Wills’ dad (Ben Cross), a particularly eccentric old buffer, as his son buggers off to university to study something really easy he has a chance of passing Art History. Quite where Wills’ mum is is not dwelt upon, but his dad clearly recalls their happy domestic life together. Hmmm.
Anyway also up in Edinburgh is spunky young Kate Middleton (Camilla Luddington, see following paragraph for my thoughts on her), latest of a long line of coal miners and air hostesses (or something, I can’t bring myself to do more than flick through the Daily Mail these days). Seemingly uniquely amongst the female student population, Kate has no designs upon Wills, although she does have a little jaw-droppy-open moment when she first passes him in the corridor. She also has an existing boyfriend, Trevor.
(I know what you’re thinking – ‘Camilla’ isn’t the most auspicious name for someone involved in this particular saga. And this actress is easy enough on the eye but she looks more like Eliza Dushku or that singer Jojo Levesque than the actual woman. I can think of glamour models who look more like Midders than this girl does.)
All the blokes wear pringle sweaters and everyone is incredibly posh, but apart from that it’s a bit like The Social Network for a bit, except that the script, acting and direction are all complete shite. Wills initially stands out in the Edinburgh crowd (this may be more due to the fact that he seems to be about seven feet tall than his Royal status, but, you know, inbreeding takes many forms) but eventually learns to blend in. The fact that all the students are visibly in their late twenties is a bit of a surprise, but, hey, it’s not as if this movie’s based on real life or anything.
Anyway Kate puts on a slinky dress at a fashion show which prompts Wills to try and cop off with her (that’s what breeding and public school do for a lad) even though Trevor is still on the scene. Soon enough, though, Kate resists Trev’s attempts to make her move to Oxford with him and he is given the shove, destined to spend the rest of his life in obscurity, watching himself being portrayed as a bit of a prick in terrible American TV movies.
With Trevor gone Kate goes down to Wills’ place for the weekend, along with all his other friends. Practically the first thing Wills’ dad says to her is ‘Can you handle a shotgun?’ Her proficiency in this department impresses the old boy no end and when Wills and Kate and the gang decide to all move into the same flat no objections are made.
Like all student flats, theirs is spotlessly clean and about the size of Heathrow Terminal One. Initially they are just good friends but soon enough their eyes are meeting significantly across the room at parties. Eventually Wills hesitantly and charmingly decides to press his suit vis-a-vis Kate by wrestling her into a hedge and sticking his tongue down her throat. Romance inevitably follows.
All the scenes of Wills and Kate, you know, at it, are tastefully done, with the real business happening out of shot. Maybe Camilla Luddington wasn’t game for anything else, in which case they should’ve gone for that glamour model I mentioned earlier. I’m practically certain she’d have been up for it.
I very rarely have noticeable physiological reactions to a movie but by this point in William & Kate the muscles in my face were cramping and something weird was going on with my tongue, almost as if it was trying to wedge itself down my throat so I would pass out. I don’t know. Maybe this was some kind of autonomic reaction or something.
Anyway, the movie grinds relentlessly on in pretty much the same vein. Kate worries Wills isn’t serious about her when he snubs her at an official party. Wills apologises by singing karaoke to her on a skiing holiday and the relationship is made public. They leave university but Kate’s life is made a misery by the depredations of the vile paparazzi. Wills, of course, has never forgiven these scumbags for the way they treated his mum and their obsession with every detail of royal life (come on, Wills, give them a break – it’s not as like they actually made a crappy TV movie about her, or anything) and does his bit to help by getting Kate some sort of coach to help her. The coach is a bit of an Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS type (maybe it’s supposed to be Princess Michael of Kent, I don’t know), who teaches Kate important life skills like curtseying and how to get out of a car without flashing her pants.
As fate and the demands of a pedestrian three-act structure would have it, eventually Kate tires of Wills’ reluctance to commit and they part. Kate is distraught and takes to drinking red wine in the bath while reading made-up tabloid magazines. Crikey! Is a shock on the cards? Of course it bloody isn’t. All alone Wills starts to pine for Kate, especially after Kate’s mum (played, by the way, by Serena Scott Thomas, who got knocked off by James Bond in The World Is Not Enough and played a rogue Watcher in Buffy, and thus has just about the most distinguished CV of anyone involved in the whole movie) persuades her to put it about a bit.
Sure enough he turns up to see Kate and win her back. Unfortunately she is coaching some kind of dragon-boat racing team at the time and so for them to speak one of them has to dive in the river and swim over to where the other one is. Now you would expect this to be the guy in a normal romance, but on this occasion it’s Kate. Hmm. More on this in a bit.
Anyway, they reconcile, fly off to a Kenya constituted entirely of stock footage and unconvincing studio sets (rather in the style of Prehistoric Women, but I doubt this is a conscious homage), he slips a ring on her, and six months of nightmare begin for all right-thinking people of Anglophone nations. The end. Thank God.
Well, obviously it’s awful from start to finish. I sort of suspect that even the people making it knew it was going to be awful, but they weren’t allowed to do any wink-to-the-camera type stuff, probably because the people who lap this kind of stuff up (and, dear God, there are enough of them) would not be remotely impressed if they did.
And, in accordance with my standard dictum that there are no bad movies, only boring ones, William & Kate does say interesting things about a certain kind of mentality. Lumberingly handsome though he is throughout (and Nico Evers-Swindell’s hair remains apparent rather better than the real Wills’ has), our hero is presented as a sort of genial halfwit throughout. Virtually every decision he makes throughout the movie (apart from the one to win her back at the end, of course) is made in accordance with Kate’s advice to him. The big draw for him is that she seems willing and able to do his thinking for him, while the attraction on her part is… less clear. He’s tall and handsome, I suppose, and sort of endearingly useless.
Nevertheless the film comes down pretty firmly on Kate’s side, as the spirited commoner struggling with her love for, like, an actual prince, in the face of oppressive Royal protocol and the general awfulness of British public life. I suspect this is because this film is made for a) girls and women of limited emotional and/or intellectual capacity and b) Americans.
The Royal family hasn’t had a great record in the marital department of late (then again, who am I to criticise) and while I’m not actually hoping for unpleasantness between the Cambridges, part of me almost wants to suggest everyone keeps a copy of this movie on hand just in case, so they can watch it then and feel suitably chastised for going so soaringly over-the-top about the whole business in the first place. At least then William & Kate: the Movie might justify its existence – I can’t really think of any other way it might manage that, to be honest.
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