As a young person who grew up on Young Adult novels and “The West Wing” re-runs, the 2019 novel “Red, White and Royal Blue” holds a very special place in my heart.
And as someone who was very excited for the film, I was disappointed with the Amazon Prime adaptation, especially with its handling of the political sides of the book. The movie was fun, and would be heartwarming as a stand-alone film, but pales next to the novel.
In the movie, Alex and Henry have had a long-standing rivalry. However, when an international incident forces the two young men to spend time together, they fall in love despite the odds.
Most of the issues between the book and the movie boil down to one thing, the movie is a light-hearted Hallmark-esque romance, whereas the novel could be described as a political comedy, and it shows in the changes to the plot.
(Spoiler warning for the rest of the article)
The biggest change to the movie is in the final conflict. The emails between Henry and Alex are not leaked in the novel by a jilted ex-lover of Alex’s in catty retribution but through a coordinated attack by the staff of the man running against Alex’s mom for president. Through the conflict, not only does Alex fall in love, but he grows up and finds himself. And by cutting out the political nature of the main conflict, many other things also change in order to complete the transference of genre.
The adaptation cuts out Alex’s older sister, June, who is a Washington Post columnist, as well as Rafael Luna, a senator Alex worked for during his campaign. But those two characters teach Alex a valuable lesson: to slow down. Alex of the book wants to go a mile a minute and race to be the youngest person ever elected to the U.S. Senate. But between his sister’s advice on prioritizing himself (and his relationship) over politics, and Luna telling Alex to not be him, Alex learns that it’s better to go slow and make something out of himself outside of politics first.
But it’s these conversations, full of the complicated truths of being a young person in politics that I loved, especially when he talks about being a Democrat from Texas. To fit in the full plot in under two hours, these scenes got cut out, turning Alex’s political involvement into nothing more than a convenient reason for him and Henry to meet.
However, the movie is not all bad. The way that the movie portrays the long-distance conversations between Alex and Henry is delightful, and the vast majority of the funny quips from the book worm their way into the movie.
But the political realism of the movie was slashed to make a movie closer to a Hallmark plot than the novel it is based on.
Abigail Spencer can be reached at [email protected]