Falling Inn Love is a 2019 rom-com about a city girl who spontaneously enters a contest and wins a rustic New Zealand inn.
Gabriela (Christina Milian) is in good shape, works at an enterprising firm in San Francisco, and has a devoted boyfriend. Life is good. Or is it? Turns out, yoga isn’t easy, the company goes belly up, and her man isn’t interested in taking the next step (in this case, being a closet shelf in her apartment). What’s she to do? Well, obviously, answer an online writing competition to win a quaint family inn down in New Zealand. When she actually wins, she thinks it’s a chance to start again, the lifelong dream to take a leap now a reality, but you know how it goes. Things aren’t what they seem and now she’s on the other side of the world and has a lot of falling ‘inn’ to do.
With a title that is hopelessly cheeky, the movie follows suit, sticking to an easy breezy tale of a fish out of water with barely a bump in the road (to mix metaphors). Like any in this crowded genre, it takes a few contrived bits of this and that to get our hero on her way, her relationships both at work and in love about as convincing as you’d expect in a plot that requires the lead to jet off to another country to find herself. Once there, she literally bumps into ridiculously handsome Jake (Adam Demos) – or at least her luggage does – and soon enough, sparks are flying as she learns GASP the presitine inn she’s won is mostly a dilapidated condemned building in need of all the repairs. Stupid internet.
What more is there to say? You’ve already guessed where the rest of it is going, this a movie with a commitment to the vanilla so fierce it’s almost praiseworthy. Seriously, there is not a single thing in the movie you won’t see coming ten minutes before it arrives, which is surely the intent of director Roger Kumble, whose efforts will surely satisfy those looking for a love story free of the constraints of everyday life.
Let’s not be too harsh though, as movies like Falling Inn Love are exactly what they need to be, so it’s no wonder Netflix plopped it in among the others filling the corners of its stable of similar lightweight romcoms. The cast is cheery and adorable, with Milian a tiny package of manufactured joy doing all she can to bring this see-through fantasy some charm. She’s teddy-bear fun to watch, but hardly given anything to do but be cute and roll with the trope-y punches. Kudos for that.
Falling Inn Love is no surprise, and if you decide to watch, then you know what you’re in for, most likely a fan of saccharin sweet fairy tales already, not looking for anything too heavy. This is definitely that, and while it’s about as flighty as a feather wisp on a light summer wind, maybe that’s enough. If so, enjoy.