‘A Tourist’s Guide to Love’ Review: Another Classic Run-of-The-mill Romantic Movie

Romance is such a wonderful feeling. Falling in love is a universal thing as well. We all fall in love at least once in our lifetimes, and the sensation can be intoxicating. Finding that person that makes you feel special is quite a thing, and it cannot be replicated by anything else except by experiencing it yourself. Romantic films try to replicate the feeling and give it to audiences, something they are partly successful at, especially when there is chemistry between the actors. Netflix delivers this week “A Tourist’s Guide to Love,” another attempt at capturing the magic.

A Tourist’s Guide to Love is a romantic film directed by Steven K. Tsuchida and written by Eiirene Donohue. The film stars Rachel Leigh Cook, Scott Ly, Missi Pyle, Ben Feldman, and Thanh Truc. The film tells the story of Amanda, an executive from a very important travel agency named Tourista. Amanda is sent to Vietnam in order to supervise the buying of a local touristic business. However, as she learns more about the country and its people, Amanda will find more than something to buy. She will find love.

Tsuchida is a veteran film and television director. He has worked on countless projects and can definitely deliver when it comes to shooting and completing a project, which is great. Finishing a project can be one of life’s hardest things, not only in film but basically in every field of work. However, finishing a project is not everything to make it stand out. Romantic films have been in the public consciousness basically since the start of cinema, so how can A Tourist’s Guide to Love to stand out from its predecessors?

The sad answer is that it can’t. A Tourist’s Guide to Love can be seen as one of the most generic films of the year. It has good intentions, and it dares to depict an interracial romance, something that sadly has become so controversial nowadays. However, outside that decision, which really only resounds outside the confines of the film itself, the movie has nothing to make it a must-watch. This is a story we have seen many times before, done better.

A Tourist’s Guide to Love matches its two protagonists in a romantic relationship with a lie at its foundation’s core. We have seen this many times before, even before the time of Cyrano. Someone lies to get closer to another person, and that other person finds out the truth sooner or later. There are countless movies with the same setup and resolution, so while A Tourist’s Guide to Love, you can definitely feel like this is a movie that doesn’t have any new ideas or that even tries to do something new with the genre.

All of this could be an excuse if there were chemistry between our two main characters, Amanda and Sinh, but there is none. Rachel Leigh Cook comes to the movie as the queen of romantic comedies; she was a master of the genre some decades ago, and she still has the charm that made her famous. However, Scott Ly, her romantic interest, while quite handsome and charming in his own right, doesn’t really have chemistry with Cook. Maybe the movie cut out all the good parts, but if so, it is a crime because nothing here would couple these two together.

This is a fatal flaw. This movie only exists to try to replicate the feeling of falling in love with someone. Most people also feel happy when they see someone happy. Normally, we want things like this to happen to us. Still, for that to happen, the movie must have certain elements. You cannot just tell us they are in love. We have to feel it. There are many scenes between the two characters, and the actors do their best, but the writing is so generic, and the situations so shallow that the relationship has nowhere to go.

When we are told that they are in love and that the lie at the foundation of the relationship might ruin everything, we just accept it. Why? Because at this point, we know exactly what these kinds of stories do and where this story is going. There are no surprises in here, and the chemistry between the actors is nonexistent, so we keep watching because we are watching. We need to kill time. Other than that, there is really no reason to watch this movie. Other films on Netflix do this so much better.

Outside of the main relationship in the movie, other tangential characters are part of the story. They are there to represent several types of relationships, but these depictions are equally shallow, and the characters are definitely underdeveloped. Their names don’t matter, they are only there for the diversity check, and that is the worst kind of representation when it is done, just to fill space. Would the movie be messier if these characters had something to do? Probably, but it would also be a more interesting type of movie.

In the end, A Tourist’s Guide to Love is just another run-of-the-mill romantic film that fails to generate the emotion and excitement of being in love. Its two main protagonists do the best they can, but they are trapped in a very generic story, and there are basically no stakes or tension of any kind. There are some beautiful scenarios, and Vietnam is depicted as a fascinating spot to explore, but everything is done superficially. The romance film genre has been stuck for decades, doing the same movie over and over again. It is time for a change.

SCORE: 4/10