Sometimes I’m not sure where ideas for these movies come from. There aren’t a ton of Christmas movies that revolve around ice skating but there are a ton about royalty. I guess they thought that the two would be good together? Let’s look at A Royal Christmas On Ice from Great American Family channel.

Abigail (Anna Marie Dobbins) was a figure skating Olympic hopeful. When an injury dashed her dreams of Olympic gold, she began teaching ice skating in her hometown in upstate New York. Prince John (Jonathan Stoddard) is the last in line for the throne. He wants something that would be his so he decides to buy an ice hockey team. He travels to the United States to look for the perfect venue to house his new team. It turns out to be the same venue where Abigail runs her classes. Can Abigail save her school or will she lose it along with her heart?

I don’t understand this movie. My biggest problem - why can’t they both use the venue? Are we supposed to think that Abigail’s skating classes take up an entire day or the hockey team uses the rink all day? There’s a ECHL professional hockey team that plays near my house and their venue holds giant music concerts during the hockey season. It’s not like the venue is completely shut down for them. This is a conflict that doesn’t exist in real life.

Second, Abigail refuses to use her name or face to advertise her classes. She’s embarrassed about getting injured during the Olympics. (Or maybe it’s the Olympic trials? I’m not sure.) I can see this both ways. On one hand, I can see feeling like a failure and who would want to take classes from a failure. A Royal Christmas On Ice should have had a few random people come up to her while she was around town and be like “Oh my god! Aren’t you Abigail the ice skater?” or something. Something that would have shown us that people still remember her. Because, on the other hand, once she puts her face on that flyer, her event sells out within days. We don’t get any sort of sense of how popular she really is with the public.

The royalty part doesn’t confuse me as much. I can understand why someone who doesn’t have a lot of royal responsibilities would want a little something for themselves. Maybe if they had shown John slacking in his royal duties that the hockey thing would have been more scandalous. As it stands, the poor guy just wants something to do.

A Royal Christmas On Ice was actually a decent movie. As with other GAC movies, this isn’t going to make a Best Of list but I enjoyed watching it. it did feel a little bit like a fanfic written by a teenage girl, which doesn’t make it terrible. It makes it feel a little like a throwback to those times.