A Tourist’s Guide to Love

A Tourist’s Guide to Love

“A Tourist’s Guide to Love” is totally harmless, just like the title suggests. It’s not quite a “Fold Laundry To” movie, because it’s very pretty to look at so you’ll actually want to pay attention. But it is a nice escape if you’re looking for something mindless on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Rachael Leigh Cook brings her signature perky rom-com presence to this Netflix movie, which hits all the beats you’d expect from such a slick and glossy example of the genre. Slapstick comedy, fish-out-of-water gags, wacky supporting characters, copious shopping montages, a love triangle, a secret to be revealed and a last-minute dash to say “I love you” they’re all here, but this time they’re set in present-day Vietnam, which gives “A Tourist’s Guide to Love” an unexpected feeling of freshness.

TV veteran Steven K. Tsuchida also directed 2021’s “Resort to Love,” another Netflix romantic comedy set in a picturesque vacation spot. This is pure formula, but the leads have such adorable chemistry with each other, and the locations are so beautiful, that resistance is futile.

Cook stars as Amanda Riley, an uptight Los Angeles-based travel agent who lives it safe with her boring accountant boyfriend John (Ben Feldman). Amanda’s boss (and apparently only friend) Mona (Missi Pyle) insists John is going to propose. Instead he tells her he’s taking a job in Ohio and putting their relationship on hold. (Julia Shiplett makes the most of a brief supporting role as Amanda’s unimpressed manicurist.)

Stunned, Amanda agrees to Mona’s suggestion that she travel undercover to Vietnam to check out a local tour company with the possibility of her firm buying it. This is also her chance to eat-pray-love her way out of heartache. Plus she’ll be there for the annual Tet celebration, which just happens to be all about renewal. Would any of this actually happen in real life? No. Would a spoiled hotel heiress actually hit her head on a tree at a ski resort, suffer amnesia and fall for the hunky, widowed dad who owns a charming bed and breakfast? Probably not. We don’t watch these kinds of movies for realism.

So type-A Amanda finds herself part of a tour group led by handsome and soulful Sinh (Scott Ly) and his effervescent cousin Anh (Quinn Truc Tran). Screenwriter Eirene Tran Donohue halfheartedly tries to flesh out the motley assemblage of fellow travelers but saddles them with awkward small talk, and no one is terribly interesting. The overly prepared Amanda insists on sticking to the itinerary because she wants to get the most out of her covert mission, but easygoing Sinh takes a more spontaneous approach that spoiler! Amanda eventually learns to embrace.

Sinh also happens to have just the right profound thing to say for every occasion, which speaks to the flux in which Amanda finds herself. (Example: “A tourist wants to escape life. A traveler wants to experience it.”) These are again familiar types, but Cook’s likability softens her character’s pushy, impatient qualities, and Ly’s understated delivery makes Sinh’s platitudes less cheesy than they might sound.

Tsuchida works with cinematographer Jon Keng, using lots of aerial shots that glisten. This makes each place seem lively and inviting, whether it’s the bustling streets of Ho Chi Minh City or the beaches of Da Nang or the lush green hills of Sinh’s home village. “It feels very weird to do nothing,” Amanda says from under an umbrella by the sea and she’s not wrong.

“A Tourist’s Guide to Love” is a travelogue with a plot although you might actually care about whether these two attractive but extremely different people wind up falling for each other in the end.

Watch A Tourist’s Guide to Love For Free On Gomovies.