Herewith a free taste of my new, subscriber-only project, Festive Cheese, in which I check out those cheesy Christmas romance flicks that, like glitter and tinsel, seem to get everywhere during the holiday season.
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Thank you, and enjoy!
—MaryAnn
If someone had told me that these silly holiday romances were likely to feature Cary Elwes in a kilt*, I’da been here for them sooner.
(*I don’t think many of them are likely to feature this, in fact.)
A Castle for Christmas is a new-this-season installment in what I am reliably informed is a veritable Netflix Christmas Universe, or NCU, and now I am half-terrified, half-intrigued. I fear I may fall down this rabbit hole.
This slice of the NCU is the story of Brooke Shields, a romance novelist from New York who escapes to the Scottish countryside to write her next book and ends up in a legally suspect agreement to buy a castle from Cary Elwes, the curmudgeonly duke who owns the moldering money pit.
Of course bonkage is in the inevitable offing, though it takes a surprisingly long time for them to even kiss — despite my yelling at the screen for them to do so — and the bonkage is entirely behind closed doors. Though we do get to see Cary’s bare chest as Brooke accidentally — no, really — busts in on him in the bath.
All the Scottish stuff is incredibly twee, clearly designed to appeal to American fairy-tale misconceptions about the country rather than adhering to anything like reality. Though I have decided that I will allow Cary’s Highland accent even though that’s not how a Scottish aristocrat would sound (he would sound posh-English), because it’s just delicious.
As deeply silly as this flick is, though, it’s really nice to to see an “older” couple — like, around my age! — doing cheesy romance. Hooray.
A Castle for Christmas is streaming globally on Netflix.
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