Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Winter Palace’ on Prime Video, Starring Danica McKellar As A Novelist Who Falls For A Prince

The Winter Palace, now available on Amazon Prime Video, is about a romance novelist who, in an effort to clear her head and focus on her next book, accepts a job as the winter caretaker of a chateau in the Rocky Mountains. When the owner – a prince! – unexpectedly shows up, she can’t help falling in love with him, which inspires her to write her book, and they all live happily ever after.

THE WINTER PALACE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Novelist Emily Miller (Danica McKellar) walks down a snow-covered street in Boulder, Colorado, discussing the new book she needs to write with her friend Becca (Zarrin Darnell-Martin). Though she’s already written one successful novel, she has writer’s block and the words just aren’t flowing on this new one.

The Gist: Emily Miller is a good-natured but bland accountant-turned-novelist. Her first novel, Romance In The Rockies, was a best-seller, so now expectations for her sophomore effort are high. She’s already received an advance and her publishers have been waiting months for her first chapters, but she’s stuck and can’t come up with any ideas. She’s also coming off of a breakup, making her even less enthusiastic about writing a romance.

To help her focus, Emily’s friend Becca pulls some strings and gets Emily a job as a caretaker at a chalet in the mountains whose owners never visit it, which means that Emily can live far from any distraction and try to get some work done. But on her first day there, a man arrives, he is the home’s owner, and after reading the fine print of her caretaker’s contract, it turns out that Emily will now need to wait on him and his entourage (a personal secretary and a bodyguard) while they stay at the chalet, and any hopes for getting her novel finished are basically dashed. The man is, of course, an actual prince named Henry (played by Neal Bledsoe), hailing from a fictional land named Concordia where he is soon to be coronated as the king. (I have to applaud all screenwriters everywhere for coming up with good fictional country names. Genovia. Aldovia. Montenaro. Concordia. I’d visit each and every last one of them on the Viking river cruise of fictional principalities.)

Henry, who is also good-natured and bland, has come to Colorado for one last visit to the family home he inherited from his favorite dead uncle, Chauncey, because there’s some law stating that kings can’t own houses outside of their own country. So he’s here to prepare the home, which they refer to as the winter palace, for sale, as well as get rid of the contents inside it. (Many of the contents are large animal sculptures that Henry himself has carved out of wood. He is not just a diplomat and future head of state, he is an artist! But kings cannot be artists! Do you want to bet that by the end of this film he somehow finds the time to be one? Yes, you should take that bet.)

As they spend the week together, Emily and Henry realize that they’re both very nice and they like being with one another but when Henry becomes king, he will be so busy he won’t have time for things like nice women, or carving beavers out of pine. Will Henry be led by his head or his heart? I won’t insult you by answering that, reader, because this movie is as formulaic as they come and there is no such thing as an unhappy ending.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A blocked writer agrees to be the winter caretaker at an isolated property in the Rocky Mountains? Let’s be real, The Winter Palace is The Shining re-cut as a rom-com.

Our Take: I recently watched Nancy Meyers’ The Holiday because I was in the mood for a non-threatening, seasonal romance with no stakes. You know, it’s the 2006 movie where Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet swap houses, L.A. for English countryside, and each one finds love in the forms of Jude Law and Jack Black while vacationing. I hate to blaspheme my beige patron saint, Nancy Meyers, but the movie is not good. Yet if we are comparing non-threatening, no-stakes, seasonal romances, The Winter Palace makes The Holiday look like Citizen Candy Kane.

Look, I know The Winter Palace is a made-for-TV movie, but that shouldn’t excuse it from trying to be interesting. Literally none of the dialogue is what real people sound like; several times throughout the movie, characters tell each other, “I’ve misjudged you,” because in this universe, no one is expected to contain multitudes, and while playing around in the snow with Henry, Emily stops and – as all writers do – yells out “This just gave me a great idea for my book!” And that’s to say nothing of the romance itself, which slowly trudges along with no conflict or tension until the last fifteen minutes, when Emily mistakenly thinks Henry is still with his ex-girlfriend but he’s not, and it gets cleared up really quickly and they make up and everyone’s happy for them.

Sex and Skin: This film originally premiered in 2022 on Great American Family, the channel where Candace Cameron Bure works and has recently come under fire for stating that the movies produced for the channel will only depict “traditional” (a.k.a. hetero) marriages because this is a family channel. All that to say, everyone wears turtlenecks throughout, and there is exactly one kiss.

(Slightly off-topic: If you feel funny watching a movie that was made by Great American Family, you can take some comfort in knowing that the film’s lead actor, Neal Bledsoe, cut ties with them after Bure’s comments. For what it’s worth, McKellar has both expressed support for the LGBTQIA+ community as well as for Bure in the wake of the controversy.)

Parting Shot: At his own coronation, Henry abdicates his role, explaining that his sister is much better suited to lead the country. He spots Emily, who was watching from behind a flag (LOL), and explains that now that he’s free of his royal tethers, he gets to spend his life with her, at their winter palace that he is no longer going to sell. They kiss without tongue and we fade to black.

Sleeper Star: I have to give credit to Neal Bledsoe, he is basically the everything bagel seasoning on this shit sandwich. Prince Henry is a character that’s neither interesting nor malevolent so we never see a character arc, he’s just a nice guy who started out being a very busy prince with important business things going on, and became a less busy prince who makes time for a personal life. Bledsoe makes him likeable in spite of this.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Yeah, right. A PRINCE?” Reader, she laughed when she heard his title, but then she realized no one was joking.

Our Call: I’m sorry, was I not clear enough before? You can SKIP IT.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.