The world sucks. Netflix’s The Princess Switch does not. So watch it.

It’s been a pretty rough year. Both in the actual world and in terms of cinematic offerings, which in my opinion have mostly ranged from depressing to disappointing (with significant exceptions, Black Panther chief among them).

A lot of hyped-up movies have been decent at best — it seems our collective standards are pretty low at present — but one flick that is everything it promises to be (and nothing more or less) is Netflix’s The Princess Switch.

Starring Vanessa Hudgens and Vanessa Hudgens, this saccharine holiday treat takes place in the fictional country of Belgravia (which probably borders Genovia) and follows high-strung baker Stacy (Hudgens) and repressed Lady Margaret (Hudgens), who discover their uncanny similarity and switch places for a few days to try each other’s lives on for size. Just because.

Stacy, the ‘boring’ one, promptly discovers that she has true princess potential, deftly charming the royal family her doppelganger is set to marry into, and of course winning the heart of the prince (Sam Palladio) in the process.

Meanwhile, the prim and proper Lady Margaret settles into Stacy’s literal cookie-cutter life with ease, falling for her counterpart’s charming but decidedly platonic friend Kevin (Nick Sagar) — whose attraction is 👏 only 👏 to 👏 Margaret-Stacy, not Stacy-Stacy, as the plot keeps reminding you.

But most importantly, Margaret swiftly becomes a would-be mother figure to the true heart and star of the film: Olivia, played by Alexa Adeosun.

This delightful character is smart and sweet and refreshingly perceptive, and her active involvement with the scheme only serves to make everything feel safer and more by-the-book.

There is also Mrs. Donatelli, a perfectly pleasant matronly mother-figure played by Suanne Braun, and a very over-the-top magician figure literally called “Kindly Man” (Robin Soans).

The Princess Switch is, basically, an amalgamation of everything you love. The Parent Trap meets Trading Places meets The Princess Diaries meets The Great British Bake-Off, Netflix has designed this film specifically for your enjoyment.

And it’s perfect. The plot doesn’t make any sense, and it doesn’t have to.

I personally tend to have mixed feelings about ‘feel-good’ flicks, holiday-themed or otherwise. I bristle at the typical tendencies to stereotype and gender-code work/life desires; I usually root for the sidelined love interest; I find the storylines dull and with an undercurrent of mockery or insincerity.

The Princess Switch seems to be the rare exception. Having grown up on a diet of It Takes Two and The Parent Trap (and the 1949 Erich Kästner novel Lottie and Lisa on which the latter was based), I am an absolute sucker for twin/lifeswap stories, which probably has a lot to do with it.

But the movie’s true magical ingredient is the feeling of utter safety that it invokes, and which shouldn’t be undervalued in these uncertain times. Whatever level of cynicism the people making this movie may have felt, it doesn’t show on screen.

Director Mike Rohl, writers Robin Bernheim and Megan Metzger and the rest of the team simply wants you to feel good when you watch it, and forget for a moment that life is not this simple, pleasant, and predictable.

Vanessa Hudgens has never been this charming, smiling her way through the entire film. Both of her characters are inherently likeable and successful in their endeavors. Her characters’ love interests are both Prince Charmings in their own right. There is no real danger to anyone’s happiness.

Regardless of how the romances work out and where the characters end up, you are always safe in the knowledge that everything is going to be fine. Everyone is attractive and successful and more-or-less content in their circumstances. Even if the switch had never happened, everything would have worked out anyway.

(Case in point: Stacy supposedly fits the job of princess better because she is a compulsive planner, yet she wins over the prince and the kingdom by doing something wholly spontaneous — so Margaret, the actually spontaneous one, would definitely have managed just fine.)

The Princess Switch doesn’t threaten or challenge or even really excite you. It simply delivers a couple of hours of pure, snow-covered fluff, everything in pretty pastels, 50 shades of pink and happy endings. It is inoffensive and everyone (even the ‘villains’) are good, decent people.

It has certainly managed to put a smile on this skeptic’s face, so I suggest that if you too have been hesitant to dive into Netflix’s holiday movie offerings, you give The Princess Switch a second look.