It doesn’t matter what the so-called experts predict based on what the market is doing or what trends are hot right now — no one knows what’s going to be a big hit movie.

With nothing of particular interest to me in theaters right now, I turned to the trusty streaming originals to see if there’s anything to review, and what was the new #1 movie on Prime Video last week but a rom-com about the son of POTUS and the grandson of the King of England.

Based on the preview, “Red, White & Royal Blue” looked like some type of Hallmark or Lifetime movie that somehow snuck its way into the big leagues. There’s nothing wrong with a mid-budget made-for-TV rom-com in and of itself, but they don’t become the most popular movie of the week. And yet, somehow, this one did.

August is usually the place summer releases go to die, and this month has sadly been one of the deadliest in recent years, but I had no idea this two-hour barrage of tired, unoriginal cliches and stereotypes would make a still relatively hot topic — mainstream LGBTQ stories — something that straight white people have had the monopoly on for decades: boring.

Based on the 2019 Casey McQuiston novel of the same name, “Red, White & Royal Blue” follows 20-something Alex Claremont-Diaz (played by Taylor Zakhar Perez), son of the President of the United States, and his rivalry with the young British prince, Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), in a fictional 2016.

After causing a major uproar at Henry’s older brother’s wedding, the two men are forced to avoid an international incident by up-playing their non-existent friendship with a goodwill visit to the UK.

Surprisingly, their rivalry soon turns into a real friendship and then blossoms into something even more. As the two try to keep their new romantic relationship a secret amid President Claremont’s (Uma Thurman) re-election campaign, their highly public lives soon catch up with them, much to the chagrin of King James III (Stephen Fry).

Although the novel came out in 2019 and the movie is a surprise hit of this year, the 2016 setting would have been a much more appropriate — and impactful — release date, if not sooner. Everything about the presentation screams early 2010s, from its soundtrack needle drops to its flat, plain cinematography to its distractingly fake greenscreen backgrounds, nothing about this movie feels contemporary.

But putting aside the technical aspects, it’s the story and tangential plotlines around it that bring any interest in these characters to a screeching halt. For comparison, you have shows like “The West Wing” and “The Crown” on one hand — prestige dramas with stories and characters who go through hell and somehow make it to the other side of American and British politics. Then you have Armando Iannucci’s brilliant satirical takedowns of those same institutions with “Veep” and “The Thick of It,” showing off the absurdity of both nation’s political innerworkings.

If you take away everything great about those four TV shows, what you’re left with is “Red, White & Royal Blue,” a story about people dealing with the American and British political machines with none of the drama, none of the stakes, none of the biting satire, none of the characters you love to hate nor hate to love. Just a bunch of pretty people being boring.

Of course, if you’re here for the romance, you’ll be just as disappointed. Perez and Galitzine are supposed to be playing two people in love, but their chemistry is nonexistent. If these guys just met for the first time on the first day of shooting and only saw each other during each subsequent scene together, I’d believe it. And their sophomoric squabbles and “will they, won’t they” struggles in the final act are as entertaining as a stand-off between the Beef-eaters and the Secret Service.

Thankfully, the two saving graces that just managed to get me through are Thurman and Fry as POTUS and King James, respectively. Even in their limited runtimes, they knew what this movie could have been and delivered performances that made me wish they were really in the Oval Office and Buckingham Palace.

As for the rest of “Red, White & Royal Blue,” its surprise success in the first week of its release will hopefully disappear in the weeks to come. It’d almost be better if it was truly terrible instead of just being mediocre, familiar and boring.