GamesRadar+ Verdict
The princesses party like it’s 1945 in a slightly stiff period drama that might, nonetheless, prove to be this year’s The King’s Speech. America will adore it.
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Party on, princesses…
Who would have thought that Queen Elizabeth II, who barely cracked a smile during her Diamond Jubilee celebrations, could make for such luminous company? Of course, in A Royal Night Out she’s a youthful princess buoyed by the joyous celebrations of VE Day – and, let’s face it, Trevor De Silva’s script isn’t overly concerned with veracity, despite its true-story outline.
Directed by Julian Jarrold (no stranger to period drama after Austen biopic Becoming Jane and the underrated 2008 adap of Brideshead Revisited), A Royal Night Out pinballs from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square to Chelsea in a cacophonous conga of dancing, drinking and sweetly polite flirting.
It is, bizarrely, a proto The Hangover or Very Bad Things or Superbad – any one of those riotous movies where partying spirals out of control. OK, so no-one’s downing jizzfizz beer à la Stifler but showing Princess Elizabeth teeter on the edge of romance with firebrand commoner Jack (Jack Reynor) is, in its way, altogether more shocking; Daily Mail readers will burst blood vessels.
Jarrold struggles to sweep things along with quite enough vigour – budget constraints crowd the edge of the frame – but Gadon is intoxicating as Elizabeth. A star is born.
