**THE WACPINE OF ‘THE PRINCESS SWITCH: SWITCHED AGAIN’**

WRITING: 2
ATMOSPHERE: 4
CHARACTERS: 3
PRODUCTION: 5
INTRIGUE: 4
NOVELTY: 0
ENJOYMENT: 4

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**The Good:**

The soundtrack has some catchy Christmas songs.

Vanessa Hudgens seems to have fun playing three separate roles at once.

To be fair, since the switcheroo is underway the attempts from both sides to overcome each other is fairly enjoyable.

It's cute and filled with Christmas spirit like the first one, and that's the most important thing, amirite?

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**The Bad:**

Vanessa Hudgens is still just as bad; Mark Palladio is even stiffer than before and the chemistry between the two hasn't improved an inch. The same goes for Hudgens' British accent.

Hudgens goes from a double role to a triple role, and while her new role is slightly better than the existing ones, it doesn't make this folk any more searchable.

The triple act actually makes it fairly hard to follow the plot sometimes. That says a lot for a movie of this kind.

The comedy is forced to such an extent that I didn't even recognize some of the quips as genuine attempts at comedy.

What's the point of this film? You tell me because I have no idea. It doesn't improve ok the original in any way, and we didn't need a continuation of the story.

The cousin is hopelessly annoying and forcibly cliched and certainly doesn't make the cast any better. She screams villain from a mile away and there are no original character traits to her.

The dialogue is somehow even less convincing and more cringe-worthy this time around. It's so clunky and unnatural sometimes that it makes no sense.

They have basically taken the same plot from the first film, added in a bunch of new genre cliches and left the heart and soul out and hoped that we wouldn't notice. Well, tough luck.

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**The Ugly:**

Now we get unwanted sequels to unwanted Netflix rom-com left and right.

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**WACPINE RATING: 3.14 / 10 = 1,5 stars**

Not a good watch, probably won't watch again, and can't recommend unless you're obsessed Vanessa Hudgens or the first movie / Freaky Friday tropes.

Look, Vanessa Hudgens does a good job working 3 times as hard for the same paycheck, but the story is a mess. The characters literally have discussions about how they don't know what's going on anymore.

The addition of this cousin undercuts the original movie's concept that it's amazing that someone else could look just like her. It is also barely amusing.

Where the first was "Freaky Friday" meets "princess diaries", this folds in "The Hustle" to add a criminal element, but like big crime: kidnapping and international affairs.

It is a very specific band of fans that are going to love this. It's not like there isn't anything to love, but the big selling point is the worst thing about the movie: it actually would have been good if they had the confidence to just do a simple switch again.

Rubbish.

Vanessa Hudgens remains terrific, but 'The Princess Switch: Switched Again' is disappointing in every other way. I enjoyed the first, but this is a let down. The plot is woeful, with the set-up and execution equally as bad. The new characters are lame, while what they do with the original lot is boring.

The new character is just annoying, not helped by how poorly they are written; as are the clichéd goons alongside, though noteworthy (for me) to see Ricky Norwood cast as one of them - Fatboy himself. iykyk. Elsewhere, the main bunch from the first film reprise their roles, with the exception of Alexa Adeosun as Olivia - which is a shame.

I admit this isn't anything utterly terrible, I didn't dislike it massively. I wanted a better follow-up though, this is a rather lacklustre attempt. A third film has already begun filming, I'll likely watch it either way but hopefully it's an improvement on this.