‘A Tourist’s Guide to Love’ (2023) Review: A Vacation of Underdeveloped Romance
A quick holiday to Vietnam, surrounded by beautiful landscapes and a tour guide will change your life. Steven Tsuchida’s A Tourist’s Guide to Love is a standard rom-com (Netflix’s version of Eat, Pray, Love ) that understands falling in love is a universal feeling. The joy of bonding and sharing the same humour with someone else is a fulfilling and life-changing moment. Tsuchida’s movie is a wanderlust romance that follows the story of a young woman finding her path.
Amanda Riley (Rachel Leigh Cook) is an essential travel agent at Tourista. She works above and beyond to provide the best service for her clientele. One night, her long-term boyfriend, John (Ben Feldman), announces that he is moving to Ohio and wants to put their relationship on hold. Frustrated at the situation, her boss, Mona (Missi Pyle), sends her on an undercover mission to acquire a Vietnamese family-owned tour company. Amanda meets Sinh Thach (Scott Ly) and his cousin and driver, Ahn (Quinn Trúc Trán), and takes her to Ho Chi Minh City. She requests Sinh to follow her itinerary guide instead of making spontaneous decisions during the trip. As Amanda visits Da Nang and Ha Noi, she learns what it means to travel in a new country and falls in love with the Sinh, who has plans to take over his family’s tour company — unaware of Amanda’s schemes.
Cook is famously known for her role as Laney Boggs in She’s All That and is all too familiar with romantic comedies. She is the queen of romantic comedies! Her role in A Tourist’s Guide to Love is refreshing. Amanda is a likeable heroine with humour and vulnerability, and Cook has the charm to bring the character to life. However, Ly, her romantic interest, lacks the chemistry to make their connection work seamlessly. It’s a shame because he radiates tenderness but struggles to bring humour and spark to his character’s romantic journey.
Part of the reason why the romantic chemistry between the two leads doesn’t quite hit the mark is because of the movie’s script. It struggles to reciprocate the feelings of love on paper and on-screen. The characters’ dialogues lack the cleverness and flirtatious moments integral to a romantic comedy element. There are many scenes where Amanda and Sinh joke and banter around, which are important moments that establish their different personalities’ but the romance feels underdeveloped. The lack of chemistry makes the movie’s ending weak.
On top of that, the foundation of their romance is built on lies. This kind of element within the romantic comedy genre comedy is nothing new, but A Tourist’s Guide to Love, along with its many problems, doesn’t bring anything fresh to the table.
With an uninspiring tale of vacation romance, Tsuchida’s A Tourist’s Guide to Romance never reaches the heights of excellence. It fails to bring romantic intimacy to the screen, even though Cook and Ly do their best with the script. The stakes aren’t dangerous enough for the characters to make bold choices in the name of love.
