Stream it or skip it?

Lonely planet (now on Netflix) confirms that the older woman/younger guy May-December romance is a bona fide trend in 2024. First Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine did it in The idea of ​​youafter which Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron jump into each other’s bones A family affairand now Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth star in this kissy-face drama. (You know how this goes: one case is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, three is a trend, and if we get another one before the end of the year, it will be a dangerous epidemic.) Planet is the product of writer-director Susannah Grant, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Erin Brockovichwhose other writing credits include In Her Shoes, 28 days, And The soloist; this is her second directorial role after 2006 Catch and release. I’m listing all these mid-range films in the hope that you’ll remember one or two, and Lonely planet seems destined to exist among them in the realm of the almost forgotten. Anyway, I bet it’ll be in the Netflix Top 10 for a week or two, since that’s the ideal destination for perfectly acceptable films like this.

The essence: Q: Do published authors Real going to all-expenses-paid Moroccan resorts to hang out and party and maybe almost get some work done, under the guise of a “writer’s retreat”? Not sure. I try not to get hung up on it. But we have to move on as best we can. We meet Katherine Loewe (Dern), fresh off the plane from New York, tired, having lost her luggage and in need of some peace and quiet. She is a veteran in this field, and she knows that they are more distracting than productive, and she intends to be as undisturbed as possible, as her editor is wary of removing words from her brain and putting them into a word processor in to feed. She seems to be good at that. She is a career writer with several successful books in her bibliography (how many and to what extent I would like to know, but it remains vague) and is a veteran of these retreats. This time, fun isn’t her priority. She wants a quiet room and if people don’t like her skipping the workshops and dinners, they will have to deal with it. We get the impression that things at home are taking up her writing time because her ex keeps texting her real estate listings. It seems time for her to find a new place to live. By herself.

Next to arrive are Lily Kemp (Diana Silvers) and her SO Owen Brophy (Hemsworth). Her first novel became an overnight kaboom, and now she has to overcome her imposter syndrome – “my book is a beach read,” she says, looking at a Nobel laureate over there. It won’t take long. Before you can say it Dan Brown sucks melons through a coffee stirrer she cheers and guzzles with all the critically acclaimed authors, and she belittles Owen “the brother” Brophy in front of everyone because “all he reads is Sports Illustrated.” It stings. He seems like a nice guy, even though he works “in finance” for a company that acquires real estate and then turns it around for profit, a job that requires him to be on his phone all the time while, I don’t know, should stand. next to Lily while she makes him feel inferior to all the people she’s trying to impress?

Rest assured, Lonely planet is a film that has little interest in meet-cutes, which is why Owen and Katherine have a completely normal meeting. A few, to be precise. She wants to GTFO with her laptop, so she gets in a truck that takes her to a nearby town (what town? Why do we have to know such things? Specificity is for weebs, bro) and is in the backseat next to Owen. They end up eating together and shopping together and being sidelined by car trouble together and hanging out with the driver’s family for an immersion of white foreigners among ethnic people in the culture scene. They end up talking about how traveling makes one feel small and humble, and if I remember correctly, she quotes Truffaut (or maybe it was Flaubert? He was definitely French), and he quotes Aaron Rodgers, for example. (That’s a lie. The Rodgers bit. Never happened. But Owen is (a former football player.) There’s a bit where Owen says, “I see your face in bed a lot,” and that’s because Lily reads all of Katherine’s books before she goes to sleep. Will he see her real face in bed before this movie is over? Well, this one Are the two most attractive people in the film, in their North African white linen shirts and, eventually, swimsuits by the pool. It would be a shame if those clothes didn’t come off at some point.

What movies will it remind you of?: Take one of the aforementioned May-December and cross it with the less crappy parts of Eat pray love and you are near Lonely planet.

Performances worth watching: As a member of the I’ll Watch Laura Dern Read the Phone Book club, I take this opportunity to say that Dern adds warmth, depth and complexity to a film that doesn’t really deserve it.

Memorable dialogue: “It always bothers me that you don’t read fiction,” Lily says to Owen as we say to the screen, DUMMP HER ASS.

Gender and skin: Ooh. Yes. There’s something of it. It’s a bit fiddly and there are no bits or butts visible, but at least it’s medium hot.

Our opinion: I’m not sure why this movie has the title Lonely planet – maybe in tribute to the travel magazine, but it doesn’t quite fit because our two protags are lonely, but are they “planets”? Don’t know. At least it’s not the usual generic title that so many Netflix films suffer from; Someone may have already been called Older woman Frenches younger man in an exotic setting somewhere in the content menus. Anyway, I liked the first hour of this rom-without-the-com, even the corny bits that make you cringe like you just swallowed a thumbtack. I mean, there’s a scene where Katherine tries to guess Owen’s nickname in high school, and not only is it “The Big O,” but she guesses it correctly. Good dissipating sadness. This is the kind of nonsense that makes reasonable people unreasonably angry when it isn’t sold to us by a professional like Dern and an amiable guy like Hemsworth, and that’s why I didn’t put my shoe through the screen, and somehow I was still in favor of them crushing genitals eventually.

What works very well, however, is how Grant delves into the hormonal chemistry of her two leads. She avoids a fake Instagram charm with beautiful scenery and lets Katherine and Owen be realistic people who work through the awkward circumstances and chat to eventually learn real, substantive things about each other. Neither of them is particularly happy right now until they make a connection. It is warm, inviting and intimate. And then we get to a third act that almost undoes the hard work and goodwill of the previous hour with a series of dramatic contrivances that sound far too similar to mainstream romance formulas. But that’s okay. I don’t think anyone is here for subtextual commentary on anything else this movie could be commenting on (the age difference? The healing power of beautiful exotic landscapes? How can people drive through the desert wearing helmets and still have absolutely perfect hair when they get off). This somewhat flimsy, but just good enough romance is about modest investments and modest returns.

Our call: Lonely planet is not as interesting as The idea of ​​you and not as funny as A family affair. But it was nice to me and I feel obliged to be nice right away. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.