Holiday in the Wild is a 2019 romantic comedy about a jilted woman travels to Africa alone where she meets an elephant conservationist.
Kate (Kristin Davis) and her husband (Colin Moss) say goodbye to their college-bound son (John Owen Lowe) and the moment he’s out the door, she learns she’s getting a divorce. That’s ill-timed as she thought all was okay and had even secretly paid for a romantic second honeymoon in Zambia. Not letting the chance slip away, she decides to go it alone and once there, meets the dashing Derek (Rob Lowe), a pilot for a sightseeing company and elephant conservationist. She soon herself gets involved with rescuing elephants where her background in veterinary medicine comes in rather handy. Has a new chapter begun?
Some movies are more about the outcome then the setup and with director Ernie Barbarash‘s latest Netflix offering, it’s just that, a generic by-the-number rom-com that deals with the heartbreak of a failed long-term relationship in a blink of an eye so as to get Kate across the ocean and in the wilds. It’s about as compelling as a thirty-second commercial for fast food in getting us to Africa but at least it settles into the rest of it with some reasonable attention to animal conversation, which is far off the beaten path of every other movie in this genre.
It’s a weird way to tell the story of the plight of elephants and it’s a little hard to take it seriously of course, the genuine hardships that people undertake in preserving these animals sort of set as backdrop to a burgeoning romance. Can’t fault the filmmakers for trying to spread the word and no doubt maybe some will depart from this superficial experience and look to learn more, which is a win on any level. However, there is also no escaping the blandness of the production despite the message behind it. It connects its few dots with big broad strokes and present every hurdle as an easy conflict. But this is not a movie designed for such. This is wholesale 90 minutes of unadulterated fluffy.
That said, at least it looks good, the production shot on location, the animals all real. There are some attempts to introduce the audience to the culture surrounding the story though it’s all sort of manufactured in a kind of imagined way of what it must be like. Either way, the effort is there and if there’s any opportunity to get viewers learning, then again, that’s a plus. Both Lowe and Davis are fun to watch and the supporting players, especially Fezile Mpela, are well cast and greatly add to the story. It all makes for a pleasant enough watch but not much else.