Lonely Planet (Netflix)- Laura Dern Is Sucked Into The Netflix Paycheck Algorithm
Laura Dern took the paycheck. She’s a great actress, an Oscar winner, so good for her to get one of the Netflix movies of the week reliant upon one or two big names. hell, Nicole Kidman anchored a movie and series for Netflix this year. So, why not Laura Dern? She even gets to have the much younger Liam Hemsworth as her co-star and love interest. However, considering this film still needs a plot, that is where we come up short.
Dern plays an author who has come to this retreat for authors, and there she runs into Hemsworth who isn’t a writer, but a supportive boyfriend of this Gen Alpha one hit wonder. this is where the movie gets weak, because instead of ever painting their relationship as strained,they’ve hired a girl who is unbelievable as an author, surrounded her with character actors I’d believe were all writers, and then turned her into a whiny baby. She’s the only one with a spouse, but is annoyed that Hemsworth isn’t all up in every moment of this event. It isn’t his thing, he has a job, and he’s trying really hard to keep it from Morocco. So, when he starts developing chemistry with the closet hiding Dern, it doesn’t bother you that he’s essentially cheating, because this film is working overtime to make his girlfriend not just a believable workaholic, but just obnoxious.
the only reason anyone roots for these two (Hemsworth and Dern) to get their grooves back, is resting solely on an otherwise conflict-free relationship. They aren’t shown, or ever hinted at having problems, and the only one that comes up is that the retreat for authors is populated… by authors. She is the one who can’t read the writing on these walls, and let him do his own thing.
So, kudos to writing a film where the older woman is matched with a younger guy, which has happened a few times this year. But, the actual script to get them there needed to be better than “my girlfriend is obnoxious, right? Audience?”
However, in terms of audio description, when we finally get to a sex scene, it is really well written. I liked the track in general, but it feels like a perfect fit for what it is supposed to be describing.
Final Grade: C