Vanessa Hudgens stars as Stacy De Novo, a Chicago baker who learns within the first few minutes of this movie that she has been selected to compete in a royal baking competition in the fictional Belgravia. She travels there with her employee and longtime friend, Kevin (Nick Sagar), and his young daughter, Olivia (Alexa Adeosun). Not long after arriving in Belgravia, she runs into Lady Margaret (also Vanessa Hudgens), who is engaged to Prince Edward (Sam Palladio) and looks exactly like Stacy. Margaret proposes that they switch lives for a couple of days so that she can have one shot at being a regular person before she marries Prince Edward. They will switch back in time for the contest. Stacy agrees, and a lot of cuteness and some mild wackiness ensues.
First of all: "let's switch lives!" movies are my jam. ("Let's switch lives!" movies are not to be confused with "Let's switch BODIES!" movies, or "Let's GROW UP REAL FAST!" movies, which often involve grown adults being made to act like children while encountering adult situations, and which make me DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE. I will not see Thirteen Going On Thirty even though Jennifer Garner is one of my favorites.) The Parent Trap is the most obvious example of the "Let's switch lives!" genre; another of my favorites is Big Business, starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin as two sets of switched-at-birth twins, one which grew up poor in the country and the other which grew up rich in the city. Closely related are "I have been mistaken for someone else and will just step into their life, which is better than my own" movies; obvious examples are While You Were Sleeping starring Sandra Bullock and Opportunity Knocks starring Dana Carvey. Those are fun, too, but there is always an uncomfortable part where the person's real identity is revealed and everyone is mad that they've been lied to.
Anyway, this is a pretty fun example of the "Let's switch lives!" genre, and I actually dig that there's not a lot of backstory and that it just jumps right into things. It's like, "BOOM! You're in a baking contest!," and then, "BOOM! Here's a duchess that looks just like you!" This movie really could have gone one of two ways, either of which would have been fine. The first way that it could have gone is that both women could have realized that they missed their own lives and that everything they wanted was right under their noses the whole time. The second way, and the way that it actually DID go, was that both women realized that they were better suited to their new lives than their old ones, and the men in both women's lives like the "new" them better than the "old" them. Stacy's longtime friend Kevin likes that "Stacy" is suddenly spontaneous and go-with-the-flow. Prince Edward likes that "Margaret" suddenly cares about the day-to-day affairs of running the kingdom. (Side note: Prince Edward is REALLY SWEET. My favorite scene in the whole movie comes when "Margaret" has to attend a royal ball with Edward. Edward suggests that she play the piano for everyone, and the whole crowd gathers around. I'm sitting there cringing, thinking that Stacy is going to embarrass herself. What she does is freeze up. Edward assumes that it is just stage fright, and he suggests they play "Carol of the Bells" together; her part involves just repeating a few notes and can easily be learned on the spot. It is maybe the sweetest thing that I have ever seen in my whole life.)
There are a bunch of minor characters that are pretty standard in this type of movie, including Kevin's daughter, Olivia, who of course immediately figures out that "Stacy" is a fake but is into the whole thing; a guardian angel type guy who pops up at all the right moments to help things along; and some employee of Prince Edward's/the royal family's who knows something is up, keeps trying to expose "Margaret," and just keeps being given unpleasant chores to do every time he butts in. There is Stacy's main competitor at the baking competition, who attempts sabotage that amounts to so little that I don't know why they even included it. There is also a really fun scene where Stacy, Margaret, Kevin, Edward, and Olivia are all in the same place at the same time, and you're afraid they're all going to run into each other and the whole secret is going to be exposed. That's actually usually the scene in movies like this where the whole secret IS exposed, but they keep it going for awhile longer here.
I think the reasons movies like this are fun are both because of the "fish out of water" aspect and the low-key stress/suspense of wondering when the secret is going to be exposed. This one doesn't disappoint. Fine holiday fun.
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