A Royal Night Out

Most films involving the royal family trade heavily on the notion that the royals are just like ordinary folk, that they have the same hopes and fears and enjoy the same things as us commoners do. In an early scene in this broad knockabout comedy, a loopy Princess Margaret (Powel) and a sensible Princess Elizabeth (Gadon) beg their parents to let them go out for the night. It's a scene that happens in almost every home on every Saturday night. "Look! We’re just like you underneath these ridiculously expensive silk gloves!" is something that every scene here screams a little too loudly.

But the royals aren’t like everyone else and tossing out movies that bang this drum is getting very tiresome. Worse, the writing here is in tandem with this ancient concept. There's a scene here where two characters, who pretend not to like each but secretly like each other, trip and fall into an embrace, followed by longing stare into each other's eyes. Writing this scene is simply unacceptable in this century.

It's VE Day and the ditsy 'Mags' and level-headed 'Lilyput' pressure the queen (Watson) and the king (Rupert Everett) to allow them to walk the London streets incognito so they can celebrate like everyone else. After giving their chaperons the slip, the sisters are separated with Margaret running into grumpy airman Jack (Reynor). Begging Jack to help her locate her sister, the two flit about the English capital and get into an array of misadventures.

If it trades heavily on finding similar ground for simple folk and royals to share, A Royal Night Out leans on the fish out of water cliché too. Margaret treats the scenes on the London streets as if she were an alien: She stares at people dancing gobsmacked (people dancing!); she stops a bus to ask the driver to follow another bus (What? They’re not taxis?); is surprised that men down dark alleys aren’t gentlemen (Excuse me, drunk, leering man hiding down a dark alley - can you tell one where OH!); and doesn’t know where Trafalgar Square is (Where’s Trafalgar Square then?). Change the attire and it’s Short Circuit.

To be fair, director Julian Jarrold (Kinky Boots, Brideshead Revisited, Becoming Jane) does what he can to link the episodic plot together without showing the stitching and gives the ninety-seven minutes a little hustle and energy. And Gadon and Reynor, despite his puzzling accent, do seem up for it.

But this is cack.