On paper, this movie should at least be in my top 10. My husband and I seem to fit every demographic represented by the main characters (writers, intercultural (Spanish & English speaking) relationship, early thirties) and we both enjoy romantic comedies. When I saw the trailer I jumped at how incredibly perfect it seemed for us!
Unfortunately, after Claflin’s character leaves the UK, absolutely nothing that happens in this movie makes sense.
Starting with the book tour, we have an author who is visiting another country to promote his book, where apparently he’s being driven around not by his publisher or any kind of hired or company vehicle, but by the translator of his book who we find out later does not even work for the publishing company. She is an independent contractor and yet this is the woman who in her puny private car is driving around, not only him, but her family, as well as the publisher. Why?
It makes no sense. Why is this woman driving her car on this big book tour when apparently the book is number one in Mexico and the publishers are making so much money? My husband and I couldn’t figure out why on earth this was happening and there was no satisfying explanation except: because the plot says so. From a professional standpoint though it portrays the company and the country rather poorly which I have to hope was unintentional.
The second thing that drove us crazy through the film was the scenes with in-world translation or sometimes lack of it. Again, none of it makes any sense in terms of who’s speaking to whom. Characters who speak English don’t speak English to Sam Claflin even though he obviously does not speak Spanish and we find out later they did know English all along! I can not count how many times characters who can speak English and know the M.C. does not understand Spanish still refuse to speak to him in the language he understands. This isn’t just random fans of his book either.
Mexican television show hosts speak in English on those television shows (even though it’s a Mexican show to a Mexican audience so where’s the logic in that) yet before they started the show (aka behind the scenes) they were speaking in Spanish to the M.C. as if they didn’t know English. All of this should have been in the reverse and the constant illogical switching had me wanting to pull my hair out. If they wanted to showcase maybe one person who was choosing to be an a-hole to the M.C. that would at least be something, but it’s everyone. This is not how the real world works and I can not stress enough that it makes no sense!
As for the two leads having any kind of arc, we were disappointed. There’s no explanation for why the M.C. (Sam Claflin) feels the way he does about sex at the beginning and only the vaguest of reasons are given for the female lead about why she doesn’t believe in love. None of it, however, is actually talked about. They don’t show any growth or come to understand each other’s point of view or even realize that they might be wrong. Instead, it is simply stated to us that his view is the wrong one, and even though hers is also flawed, that is never addressed. No, she is portrayed as being in the right (to not believe in love while also literally being in a romance) and yet the characters just sort of stumble into their romantic feelings which come out of nowhere.
One minute they are upset and the M.C. is justified in his anger about his intellectual property being tampered with; and the next she’s having a heart-to-heart with him, again, in Spanish. To be clear she KNOWS he understands nothing and is only doing this so her son can overhear as he doesn’t know English yet, but again, the M.C. understands NONE of what’s happening. Yet somehow by movie magic, he does understand and then proceeds to go and talk to the female lead’s son in English which, remember, he doesn’t understand. If this was the first time that it had happened in the film I could have seen this moment as being funny because “oh look the dumb white guy is trying to talk to the kid who has no idea what he is saying”. But it wasn’t the first time and it was not funny; in fact it was probably the 11th time people were speaking and not considering the in-universe, logical need for translation. It was bad.
It’s after this random illogical encounter, that the M.C. is seemingly now in love with the female lead. Here the movie suddenly turns as the book tour ends and yet Sam Claflin is still sticking around. Now apparently, the leads have to write a book together. Yet again, the M.C.’s ideas are all presented as the bad ones even though his are based on emotion (which is a pretty important part of most romance novels) and she is solely contributing cringy erotica lines (a la the principle in 10 things I hate about you). From this, we’re supposed to believe she’s the better writer out of them for some reason. It would have been way better for us to see the blending of their styles, of him bringing in the emotion and her bringing in the sex, but no. Instead, his ideas are bad and her ideas are good, end of story. Again they don’t bother making it make sense.
I wanted so much to like this movie. I love Sam Claflin; and as I stated before my husband and I are both writers and we’re intercultural with him being from Latin America and I from an English speaking country. This film should have been right up our alley. Yet in the moment I couldn’t help thinking that I’d never seen a worse movie in my life. Probably an over-exaggeration, but this film seemed to trigger me. My husband had to pause the movie so many times in the first half because we were both so mind-boggled and asking each other why on-earth characters were doing things they were doing because it was so ridiculous.
The second half we would pause just to sit there and be like “Well yeah what else can we expect from this freak show” or to laugh hysterically at the horrifyingness of what we were watching. I don’t know, perhaps someone who has no knowledge about writing, does not read books, or has absolutely zero understanding of what any kind of international or intercultural relations looks like might be able to enjoy this film. Maybe we were just unlucky enough to have so much in common with the main characters that all of the inaccuracies and idiotic choices slapped us in the face. In the end, I strongly disliked this movie and for the first time I feel like reviewing it has just helped to purge it from my system.
