Red, White, & Royal Blue is Like Heartstopper, but With R Rating
The two projects have a lot in common.
Amazon Prime's new romantic comedy, Red, White & Royal Blue, is undeniably one of the most talked-about movie releases of the month, and for good reason. Fans are psyched to finally see a mainstream movie centred around a same-sex couple, and the fact that it features some big-name celebrities like Uma Thurman and Stephen Fry in supporting roles only adds to the excitement.
While the storyline, which revolves around the son of the U.S. President falling in love with a British prince, might seem far-fetched for a romantic comedy, director Matthew Lopez made it work in the best possible way.
However, fans quickly drew comparisons between this movie and the Netflix series Heartstopper, often hailed as the best gay romance of the decade. Red, White & Royal Blue indeed faces challenges standing up to such a benchmark. As soon as the trailer for the movie came out, some expressed concerns about Uma Thurman's peculiar accent and the perceived lack of chemistry between the leads, fearing these elements might ruin the movie's appeal even before it premiered.
'What the hell is Uma's dialect. Unfortunately, the pair just does not work for me. 2 stuck-up snobs dating each other. They look like polished Ken dolls,' a fan said.
However, now that Red, White & Royal Blue has dropped on Amazon Prime, it's safe to say it's a great rom-com, even if not as brilliant as Heartstopper. There is one thing that's still bothering some fans, though: how did this cheesy romantic movie end up with an R-rating?
The intimate scenes included in the movie are not at all explicit, and the occasional F-bomb dropped here and there throughout the story is hardly enough for the MPAA to have given this harmless romantic comedy an R or restricted rating.
Fans quickly jumped to the conclusion that the film got the R rating because the main couple are gay, which is really strange indeed, seeing how much more sexually explicit romantic movies featuring heterosexual couples have been given the PG-13 rating in the past, despite featuring numerous graphic sex scenes and streams of profanities.
Source: Reddit.