Advertisement

A Tourist's Guide To Love review: Is She's All That star's new Netflix rom-com any good?

scott ly, rachael leigh cook, a tourist's guide to love
Is She's All That star's new Netflix rom-com good?Netflix

She's All That star Rachael Leigh Cook gets to Eat, Pray, Love her way around Vietnam in this slight but gorgeous-to-look-at romantic comedy based on the actress's own idea.

Cook plays Amanda, an organised, slightly rigid travel executive who goes on assignment to Vietnam following a break-up. She's there – undercover as a regular tourist – to find out whether a local family-run tour company is worth purchasing, but instead learns to chill out, relax, and lust after handsome tour guide Sinh (Scott Ly).

It helps that Sinh is no ordinary tour guide – and we don't just mean because he emerges from the sea in slow motion, Dr No-style, rippling his six-pack. He and his cousin Anh avoid the tourist traps and show their guests the real Vietnam, from street markets and the My Son sanctuary's temple ruins to the family's own village in the countryside, complete with a Betty White-style outspoken grandma.

scott ly, than truc, a tourist's guide to love
Netflix

Related: New on Netflix - Movies you can watch now

It is in these moments that the movie works best and avoids many (but not all) of the clichés of the American-abroad romcom. Amanda is a seasoned traveller thanks to her job, so we don't have to endure too many scenes of her fumbling around like a lost idiot or commenting on how cute/weird/foreign everything is.

Director Steven Tsuchida also wisely focuses on the spectacular landscapes and towns of Vietnam as the tour takes the travellers, and us, to Ho Chi Minh, Hoi An and Da Nang, and spends enough time at each destination to make you want to immediately book a trip there.

It's not all lovely Vietnamese scenery, however. When the camera moves away from the views and on to the potential romance – and a possible love triangle – A Tourist's Guide To Love sadly becomes sluggishly predictable, and bogged down by a leaden script.

Sinh seems to spout homilies rather than speak in real sentences ("Always move forward, never back," he says about walking across a traffic-filled road, even though we know he is really talking about Life), and you can almost feel the metaphors about embracing life, letting go and moving on floating towards you on the South East Asian breeze.

scott ly, rachael leigh cook, a tourist's guide to love
Netflix

Related: Is Reese Witherspoon's Netflix rom-com Your Place or Mine worth a watch?

Supporting characters – including the other members of the tour, and Amanda's boss (played by Missy Pyle, who deserves far more screen time and much better dialogue) – are wasted, and there's a niggling feeling throughout that every conversation Amanda has with any of them is about a man.

It's hard to root for Amanda's journey, or the movie itself, when she jumps straight from a long-term relationship into a new romance without taking a breath – couldn't we have had at least five minutes of dialogue about her finding independence before she hooked herself to another man?

And while the movie has the happy ending that romantic comedy fans will be expecting (that's not a spoiler as there are really no surprises here), perhaps a better choice would have been for Amanda's love affair to be with Vietnam rather than just a new man.

A Tourist's Guide To Love is available to watch now on Netflix.

You Might Also Like