Falling Inn Love is available for Streaming on Netflix
A romantic-comedy film’s most needed asset is either its romance or its comedy. A great one hits both and a mediocre misses. That’s the case with Netflix’s latest romance flick Falling Inn Love. It started on a bad note but somehow redeemed itself to tolerance with its good showcase of New Zealand adventure that compensated for its lack of heart.
This movie is about an oblivious lady named Gabriela (Christina Milian) from San Francisco who just lost her job and broke up with her boyfriend who also surprisingly won a New Zealand inn through an internet contest.
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When she found out that the property isn’t as pretty as advertised, she teamed up with the very welcoming townspeople and agreed for a business partnership with Jake (Adam Demos) to remodel the house to appease a buyer. When the inevitable romance between the two happened, Gabriela must choose between selling the property and go back to America or follow her heart and her newfound home in New Zealand.
The very first problem with this film is its first 30 minutes. It is messy, muddled and rushed. The transition from Gabriela’s life in America to New Zealand happened in the first ten minutes of the movie with no proper introduction to the character, her status and simply not enough details to give its audience something to care about.
The direction in this part was so disappointing as it was filled with random cuts from sequence to sequence. It certainly is a challenge to sit through its first act. Getting past this point is really rewarding as the story finally finds its footing. It almost seemed like the first 30 minutes and the final hour were directed by different people. Everything just jumps from first to second act without development. But at least, the final hour did way better which made the film watchable.
For a romantic-comedy, this film totally lacks in romantic elements as not only did it rush the love story, but also the main characters simply have little chemistry as a couple. It is interesting to point out that their interactions during the remodeling phase was much more fun than their whole romantic affair as the cliche narrative and predictability obviously didn’t help. The main conflict between the two up to its resolution could have been dealt better by providing more impact to their evolving characters.
Christina Milian is really good as Gabriela in this movie. She embodied the spirit of a person whose trying to turn her luck. Most of the characters though, including Gabriela, overacts on its humor. It felt like the whole comedy aspect of the movie is forced. A lot its comedic gestures relied on clumsy, cartoonish and gag jokes that didn’t really land for the most part.
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Putting all these criticisms aside, Falling Inn Love turned out to be a good adventure film as it presented a good small town vibe, great New Zealand landscape and fun transformation of the Bellbird Valley Farm. The journey that Gabriela went through to revitalize this abandoned inn, the family she has built with the community and a new home she has created are definitely the best parts of the movie.
If only the romance sparked the right way and humor landed on both feet, the potential of this movie could have been fully realized.Nevertheless, Falling Inn Love is watchable for the fans of the genre, but never for those who are seeking something new. It may have started terribly, the movie did find its way to the finish line, just a little bit late to take home a medal.
Falling Inn Love Rating: ★★½
Falling Inn Love Trailer:
Falling Inn Love Links: IMDb, Wikipedia
