By Mia Shea
Staff Writer
“Lonely Planet,” released on Netflix on Oct. 11, follows the rom-dram love story of Katherine and Owen as they embark on a vacation to Morocco as strangers on an excursion. Katherine, played by Laura Dern, is on an idyllic writers retreat to help with her writer's block. This is where she meets Owen, played by Liam Hemsworth, who works in private equity.
Owen arrives at the retreat with his girlfriend Lily, played by Diana Silvers, but his job and work calls begin to take priority and Lily grows frustrated as tensions rise between them. As this continues, Katherine takes a fond interest in Owen and the two begin exchanging passing glances at each other.
Dern and Hemsworth’s performances in “Lonely Planet” were certainly memorable, as their chemistry throughout was evident and showcased well. Even in scenes where Katherine and Owen were simply sharing a passing glance, the chemistry is highly recognizable and makes this film a fun watch. However, I believe that the two leads may have been overqualified for roles as simple as these due to their previous professional experience.
Overall, the movie was your average, cheesy Netflix romance film. However, the storyline itself was quite unique because of the individual stories of the characters, and Katherine being a newly single writer. It was definitely refreshing to have some variety rather than the same Hallmark, cookie-cutter-type love story.
The film received only a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which honestly is not very surprising. As unique as the storyline was, at its core, there wasn’t much happening, and the way that the plot falls when Lily and Owen break up is almost “too perfect.” I would have loved for the film to go in the direction of Lily and Katherine fighting over Owen.
I felt as though making the story focused more in the direction of either Katherine’s writing or her relationship with Owen would’ve been beneficial to the plot, as it often felt all over the place. The plot flipped back and forth too much between Katherine as a character, the love story and her work.
The movie is short in length — only 96 minutes long — and the content itself is not super exciting as the plot only begins to pick up around halfway through the film. I believe that if the movie was a little bit longer, they could have gone into more depth about what happened in the process of Katherine writing her book about Owen and why their relationship was so memorable for her.
The theme of this movie is finding love in unexpected places. It was a cute film, but severely lacks in both depth and plot. I think it is a fun date night watch, but there are for sure better things to watch on Netflix.
