The Prince and the Pauper

Release Date: March 11 – March 25, 1962

Watch Date: March 3 – March 8, 2024

“In the London of 1537, two boys resembling each other exactly meet accidentally and exchange ‘roles’ for a short while. After many adventures, the prince regains his rightful identity and graciously makes his ‘twin’ a ward of the court.”

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   I have been sitting here and trying to come up with anything to say about this movie. And that’s really frustrating. Because it shouldn’t be this hard.

   I love the Tudors. I think they’re a fascinating royal dynasty, short lived, but one that propelled so much change in Great Britain, one whose after effects we’re still experiencing. If you’re Anglican, thank Anne Boleyn’s banging body. And this movie, this story, it is about the Tudors. It is very specifically about Edward, who died tragically short – unless you were a member of the Catholic church – and hearing at the end of this film that he lived happily ever after seems like a little bit of a lie.

   We spend a lot more time with Edward than Tom, and that makes sense. Tom’s whole shtick while he’s pretending to be prince is that everyone thinks Edward has gone insane, and then he just has to survive a coronation. Edward gets to go on fun adventures with what can only be described as a swashbuckling, goodhearted adventurer that takes a shine to him. That’s just more entertaining.

   A priest gets murdered and Bob and I spent way too long trying to determine if he was a Catholic priest or not. Cause he’s a priest, but he’s not living in a parish, he’s kind of in hiding, which would go with Catholic, but he is calling himself Father and walking around in priestly robes which is pretty Church of England – at least if you didn’t want to get murdered. But Edward is upset that he was murdered, and would he be if he was Catholic? I don’t know how progressive Edward was on those matters. Based on the many books I’ve read about it, not very.

   Now, of course, this movie is based on a Mark Twain novel so me expecting a ton of historical accuracy is probably raising my expectations too high. But I love the Tudor period. So don’t set things in the Tudor period if you’re not going to try and get it at least somewhat accurate. I mean you’ve got Henry being a fat sick guy, and Edward being highly educated, and Mary being kind of terrible, and the siblings not really knowing each other very well so…

   I still really want to know what kind of priest that was, not enough to look it up for myself.

   This movie started off dull, but I think by the end Bob and I were both fairly invested in it. The production value isn’t huge, because it was a made for tv movie, and while there are moments where they have Edward and Tom on the screen at the same time, and based on ‘The Parent Trap’ they had the technology to do that, it doesn’t happen too often. That’s partly the nature of the story that’s being told, but that’s probably also not wanting to spend too much time on a made-for-tv movie.

   I’ve heard there’s a Mickey Mouse version of this tale, but I haven’t yet seen it pop up on Disney+. If it does, I’d be interested to see how it holds up to this version.

   Probably better. Because I’m fairly certain King Edward VI was not a mouse.