Should you watch ‘A Tour Guide to Love’ on Netflix?

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Image: Netflix

Rachael Leigh Cook’s latest romantic comedy, A tour guide to lovenow it’s streaming, but should i give it a watch?

In my fascinating and (naturally) well-researched review for this year’s Netflix rom-com your place or mine With Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, I began with a brief history of Netflix’s rom-com renaissance beginning in 2018 with (like it or not) The kissing booth. They had a couple years of teen romance franchises (to all the boys), critical favorites (my personal choice, Set it up), & star vehicles (You will always be my maybe) which actually worked on the platform. In the years that followed, they tried to capture that success once more, but unfortunately, nothing held up despite the headline-grabbing talent that shows up within them (Yes, I’m talking about your place or mine).

However, the latest entry in the genre, A tour guide to love, does not fully belong to that category. Not precisely. This particular movie feels closer to the harmless and benign competitors of the Hallmark movies of the world than it does to the level of some of Netflix’s biggest-budget efforts.

In a sense, the film fuses the pieces of the career of its star Rachael Leigh Cook, who rose to fame in a different era of pre-Netflix teen romance in the late ’90s and early ’00s, starring in cult classics like She’s All That & Josie and the Pussycats while also doing a brief stint on Dawson’s Creek. However, for the better part of the last decade, she has moved down the TV movie route doing projects like her “In the Vineyard” series for Hallmark and a few Christmas movies as well.

A tour guide to love marks Cook’s third Netflix Original after 2020 Guaranteed Love opposite Damon Wayans Jr and a smaller mother role in the gender-swapped remake of she is all that entitled he is all that.
While those movies lean more toward the comedic side of rom-com, Tourist seems to be going in a much different direction.

Written by TV movie writer Eirene Donohue (sugar and spice holidays, drink kill love) and directed by Steven K. Tsuchida (Netflix’s resource to love & cobra kai), the film can be categorized as “ASMR for millennial moms”; a comfortable companion that pairs well with a warm bath, a glass of white wine, and the occasional second Instagram screening.
A tour guide to love knows exactly what it is and the audience it serves. It fills the inside of the Venn Diagram between vacation porn, romance, and nostalgia if the vacation porn circle was desperately trying to remove the other pieces altogether.

Scott ly a tour guide to love coming to netflix in april 2023

Image: Netflix

Set almost entirely in Vietnam, the story centers on meticulous and reliable travel executive Amanda Riley, whose stable life is upended when her longtime boyfriend decides to take a job on the other side of the country. Sidelined by the unexpected breakup, Amanda accepts an assignment to go undercover and learn about the tourism industry in Vietnam; more specifically, a tour business that may be a potential purchase for Amanda’s company. Along the way, she finds adventure and romance with her Vietnamese expat tour guide Sinh (Scott Ly) when they decide to divert the tour bus to explore life and love off the beaten path.

Depending on what you came for with this endeavor, you might be disappointed by the adventure and romance in the description above. If your definition of adventure is trading beautiful and interesting tourist traps for EVEN MORE beautiful and interesting places with fewer tourists, then you’re in luck because that’s about as far as this movie will go.

Remember the terms “harmless” and “benign” I used earlier to describe the competition from these kinds of movies? This one uses the same mold to give you the feeling of wandering through the Vietnamese countryside with the same nostalgic awe as a member of the tour group. As for romance, the same adjectives apply as the film’s “complicated” love connection meets very few obstacles and produces only a low level of chemistry between Cook and Ly. While charming separately, the two leads don’t register the heights necessary to compete with the beauty of their backdrop, nor do you think they won’t in the end.

Scott shopping a tour guide to love coming to netflix in april 2023

Image: Netflix

In general, A tour guide to love it’s a flaccid TV movie-style entry that doesn’t rise above its clichés and modest charm. The sights and sounds of modern Vietnam capture your attention more than the on-screen duo that should capture our hearts.

This will be a classic “put it in the background” for a certain crowd, but it will be a mostly forgettable Friday night for a more discernible group.


Look A tour guide to love on Netflix if you like:

  • guaranteed love
  • she is all that
  • resource to love
  • Fall in love with the inn

MVP of A tour guide to love

Scott Ly as Sinh Thach

While he doesn’t pair up as well with his leading lady, Scott Ly displays a level of charisma and good looks on the small screen that may net him many more opportunities in similar film and television roles like this one for years to come.

For a film that feels more like a tour than a romance story, it’s a delight to follow and could be a mainstay in Netflix’s Vietnamese and American projects in the future.


PLAY, PAUSE OR STOP?

PAUSE.

If you’re a TV movie junkie who loves the combination of Rachael Leigh Cook and travel documentaries, this one is for you. But if you have a more refined palette for top-tier rom-coms, you might want to think twice before jumping into this movie.

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