★
When city girl Gabriela spontaneously enters a contest and wins a rustic New Zealand inn, she teams up with bighearted contractor Jake Taylor to fix and flip it.
Classification: PG
A Hallmark movie that somehow was left in a dumpster behind their headquarters, found by a Netflix executive and then streamed on their service to bore their audiences worldwide. Falling Inn Love is a dud that builds its characters and story from the cringest clichés and romantic tropes that lead to a collage of bad acting, hokey scriptwriting and stilted pacing. With a plot ripped right out of some trashy romance novel, director Roger Kumble uses all the hallmark ideas of a working woman, humble little town, and opposite attracts romance. In the moments where it's not overbearingly abysmal, small parts of the film can be quite sweet. The issue is there isn't a shred of realism to be had with Falling Inn Love as every execution of logic and plot is either pure convenience or some shallow attempt of a romantic fairytale.
The sketchy realism is only strengthened with its performances, from leads to side characters all staying in their hackneyed box. Hunk with a heart of gold, nosy neighbours, effeminate gay gossipers, a woman who wants to focus on work and doesn't have time for love, and while Falling Inn Love isn't offensive or prejudiced in any way the characters are written just feels off-putting. It doesn't help that the actors are unable to inject any reality into their performance either its poorly timed comedy or forced romantic melodrama. The New Zealand setting does allow for some kiwi accents, which always makes terrible dialogue less of a headache but even this has its limits. Christina Milian as lead Gabriella seems to just be faking it until she makes it and never does, its all just the same soap opera acting and even with Adam Demos's discount Hemsworth looks, the romantic chemistry between the two is non-existent.
It can feel that you've seen Falling Inn Love before because it follows the Hallmark movie formula to the most minuscule detail, the only thing missing is the Christmas setting and its almost baffling why this storyline isn't set during the holiday season. Nothing about the film feels original or unique and makes it easy for the audience to drift out from its banal plotline, the whole working woman finds where she belongs in a humble little town plus montages of fixing a house is just tough to endure. It's all so formulaic that the notion of this being an artistic endeavour is laughable, a clear product designed to appeal for fans of romantic fantasies but the film can barely inspire a heartbeat let alone a full-blown dream. Nothing but cliché setups and payoffs as Falling Inn Love wants to tell a story about a woman finding happiness but wants to put no real work into this goal.
With its "artistic inspirations" abundantly clear the production faults of the film shouldn't be too surprising as Falling Inn Love has issues both audio and visual. With washed-out cinematography that makes everything appear artificial and fake, the soap opera fantasy of the film is only cemented by the consistent glow off every surface. Its distracting how clean and well lit every moment of the film is, like every element of the film had been sanitised from the real world so it wouldn't distract or remind the hopeless romantic audience about their own lives. Audio at points just abruptly changes, like a microphone went bad during shooting and the couldn't fix it in post-production. With white noise and pitch change breaking whatever sense of immersion the film could create.
It's not offensive but it is insulting to the audience's intelligence, going for the common standard and making no effort to be anything beyond. Falling Inn Love may seem warm, inviting and a fun romantic journey but its all just a shell covering up the fact that there is nothing of value from its script, direction, performances or production value. Without a sense of reality to grasp to, nothing about the story seems plausible even the catalyst seemed forced and shady and there were no consequences even from that. Everything that happens is just to make sure that two attractive actors can ogle each other and nothing else is of concern.
Director: #RogerKumble
Release Date: August 29th 2019
Available exclusively on Netflix.
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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