Once Upon A Holiday (2015) on Netflix

When a Princess escapes her entourage to explore New York City over Christmas, she meets a young man who shows the beautiful stranger his side of the city.

Once Upon A Holiday is an engrossing TV movie that centers around a royal princess who is tired of her diamond-studded privileged life and the royal responsibilities that come with being a princess. Desiring to see how regular people live, she finally gets the courage to leave it all behind by escaping one day, which puts her in the path of a wonderful young man and good Samaritan who sweeps her off of her feet.

—Chrissy Campman

With her paternal Aunt Margaret, Princess Katherine of Montserai - Katie to her friends - who was orphaned twenty years ago, is in New York City for the three days preceding Christmas to perform some royal duties, before heading home to preside over Montserai's Christmas Festival, someone from her family taking on that Christmas day role for three hundred years. The last time Katie was in New York was this time of year when she was a child, that the last time she really felt the joy of Christmas in having it personal to herself in spending some alone time with her commoner mother, Princess Theresa. This trip, Katie's time is controlled completely by Aunt Margaret in carrying out those royal duties, with Aunt Margaret not finding even the one hour Katie wants to see a photography exhibit at a local museum, Katie who studied photography, her love for which was passed down by her mother. Sensing an opportunity, Katie is able to ditch Aunt Margaret, her service detail, and her royal commitments to hit the streets of New York on her own incognito. On the street, she meets Jack Langdon, a contractor specializing in renovations, he being a Good Samaritan in helping her. Jack, an MBA who used to be a businessman in real estate, hated that life which led to the decision to chuck in his career for a job using his hands, further leading to the break-up with who was his fiancée, Gretchen, she not having signed up for a marriage to who she considered a common laborer. He has since been shy of entering into a relationship. In trying to help Katie, he knows that she is hiding something, his help unconditional to whatever she is hiding. Regardless of knowing nothing about her, Jack slowly starts to fall for her, and she for him. Spending any time together may have a limited time to however long her incognito life. Meanwhile, George Holt, Theresa's childhood friend and lawyer, advises Margaret to give Katie her alone time wherever she may be, while Margaret instead employs the services of Montserai's longtime New York fixer, Simon, to locate Katie and bring her back, especially important for Katie to make it home for the Christmas Festival. All the while, George and Aunt Margaret have to hide Katie's disappearance from the media. Complicating matters is Ross Hargreave, Jack's sister Emma's self-absorbed boyfriend, a local television reporter who is assigned to cover Katie's New York trip, he who suspects that there is more to Katie not making it to her scheduled public appearances than George and Margaret's explanation of she being under the weather.

—Huggo