Film review: A Royal Night Out (12A, 97 mins)

What the Queen did on VE day 70 years ago
A Royal Night Out, with Sarah GadonA Royal Night Out, with Sarah Gadon
A Royal Night Out, with Sarah Gadon

In this celebrity-obsessed age of 24-hour social media and omnipresent paparazzi, it’s inconceivable that younger members of the royal family could mingle with us, the unwashed hoi polloi, without attracting attention.

Heirs to the throne would be engulfed by a sea of flashing smart phones, their every word regurgitated and scrutinised in 140 poorly punctuated characters.

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Seventy years ago, Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen of England, and her sister Princess Margaret briefly escaped from Buckingham Palace to celebrate VE Day with the teeming crowds outside the royal residence. They mingled with their subjects, completely incognito, as the people of London marked the end of the Second World War with an exuberant evening of revelry.

Screenwriters Trevor De Silva and Kevin Hood use this true event as the starting point for a heart-warming comedy of manners, which propels the two princesses on journeys of self-discovery in a capital awash with carnal desire and potential 
danger.

A Royal Night Out is frothy fun, embellishing fact with outlandish fiction.

Comedy/Drama/Romance

Star rating: 7/10