Contents
About Love Afloat
Love Afloat is a 2022 Real One Entertainment romantic movie. Lorelai something is taken away from her graphic design company at the verge of making it as partner to find herself taken to an island where her relative had settled, to take possession of the boat she inherits. We know the end, we know the plot just by looking at the film. What we want is to enjoy the ride without poitics, much thinking and enough suspension disbelief to surf the wave. And to not think there has to be at least some chemistry, some real dialogue and continuity to not break us out of the story.
The Love Afloat Cast
Alanna Smith and Travis Bravo-Thomas lead the cast as Lorelei Brentano and Rob Alexander. Demi Castro and Alina Alcantara star as lovebirds to be Ernesto and Celeste.
M. Harvey Chris Mimikos is Evan Howe , her boss, who wants to make her partner. Emmett Hunter
What I loved
I love how naturally the diversity features. The diversity is lovely there and feels natural, except I guess for Grace but it is still fine. The people look real and inviting in the way they exist. I love how real the cast looks. I love the environment. I might have overthought the perceived metaphor of her going to find herself in the old boat that her grand uncle has left for her which bears her name because the name is that of her grand aunt, her uncle’s partner. But that is where it stops
The 5 first minutes of Love Afloat
From the outset, bad acting, not knowing what to do with their bodies or facial expressions and always ready to break into a smile as if it were the efault expression of a lead in a romantic movie. Oversmiling especially when you have just heard your great uncle died and trying to convince your boss to let you go to it by telling them with a smile that you’re inheriting a bo9at rather than a close member of the family has passed away when your boss is telling you that you are getting a partnership
The Love Afloat Cast
The characters are not relatable, the dialogue is boring, the plot is not interesting. The camera angle choices did not help bring dynamics or even interest to the characters or the environment. The movie does not manage to find a balance between amount said and amount pertinent to the plot, amount relevant to the plot and amount interesting to the viewer, the former probably because there is little to no plot and the latter because it is probably to busy trying to tick the superficial boxes of the romantic movie formula. Just
Having ticked diversity, cute child, ever smiling leads, older protagonists for grounding, it still manages to alienate the viewer by having poor exchanges that sound like table reading,
Boring
12 minutes into the film and I was bored to no end, realising I still had an hour and fifteen minutes to justify a whole review blog post. Thinking it could not get worse and I might have sat through worse, I powered on, only to be greeted, within seconds, with an expositional reading or the poor man’s version of an already poor expositional narration. And there I realised it: nothing was ever going to happen. This movie was just going to be a set of expositional procedures, from the pretend presentation, to the pretend colleague’s feedback to the letter and now to the captain’s logs.
If
Somewhere in the film, and I cannot tell you when without having to check the time left and hurting myself all at once, I hear the words: “”If this boat could talk”. The words come out of the =female protagonist, as she closes the captain’s logs she had been reading. Yes, I thought, but you are doing it for it. And I thought further, if this film could happen. And if these actors could act. And if this plot could mean anything at all. And if this (lack of) story could end.
Amteurish
There is a lot that feels amateurish. One example is when the lead female character sits at the restaurant and calls for a mechanic for her boat, she turns to the camera to do so, rather than facing the river for what should be a private conversation (at least one that no one else should be privy to or care about). It is hard to forget the camera is there or that it is a movie when so many moments such as these or the over-smiling without a cause bring you right back to it, no suspension of belief. There are specific moments that feel completely unnatural, e.g., when the female lead reads the journal out loud: how rewarding it is for a movie viewer to watch someone read… The movie shows its tendency not to make a smidge of an effort to show not tell.
Lost the plot
There are so many moments where the plot forces itself on the flow and breaks it. There is no single person in their right mind who will throw the water overboard in the twisted position the lead female character is in but film has to get to film and the staging of the second incident is worse than the first one but I guess they also had to bring the incident back to circle since ehw first wet her by failing to warn her on time. Is this some kind of foreplay? Well it is unsubtle a, forced, boring and fails. a particular thing that only happened very little but pissed me off enough is this. The dialogue is already stale. Having a character repeat what another says is just going to make it double stale. Stop it. FInally, the music and the soundtrack in general keeps hinting at the atmosphere that should be feeling but it is way too much telling and not showing
The leads
The female lead has a nice smile but nobody in real life keeps that up this much even if they were complimented about it. In spite of his lovely smile and faussettes, the only time I actually like the male character is when he stops smiling, below the deck as she comments on the photo, yes, one second image and a 1000 words exposition, tell not show again. He is real right there, just looking gone in his thoughts, and then the camera angle changes and we go back to the film. And that sound effect that is supposed to accompany the irony of things that sounds a lot more like a phone ringing reminds us consistently that the female lead has not done a single thing towards making sure she gets the partnership that apparently she was so excited, even eager about.
Fillers
There are so many useless pieces of dialogue just meant to parade the words acting as actual conversation and to endear us to the characters but they just don’t do the job. They just feel like fillers and have the effect that is opposite to what I hope was intended. They just annoy. Is it a good time to tell you that I don’t do windows? Not only is she going to do it without a fight but the next second we see her on it is the last second we ever hear about the subject. So plot-guiding, character-defining or just a bit of a fun statement? Neither unfortunately, just a time-wasting, failed-fun, filler.
Disconnected flow
The film seems to have created bits of stories but fails to connect them, which breaks the flow and the sense and point of the movie. Lorelai mentions that “working remotely is going very well” but without that sentence, there is no sign she is even thinking about her partnership, working at all on her assignments or worried about what is going on in her office. For 2 seconds, there is a “rebranding strategy done” as she closes her laptop but frankly I feels more like a last minuted realisation from the movie makers that they needed to show a few seconds evidence of their character even vaguely working. “Until once more, someone else mentions it again. That coupled with the overacting flirts, the misacting cases and the underacting bits just drowns the flow. The direction seems lacking.
The case of the absent coffee
There is that bit of the movie that kind of suns it up. The female lead wakes up and finds the male lead had been there for a while. He’s prepared coffee for her. My first thought was that coffee is probably cold since he did not know when she would wake up and clearly they both can hold those cups without burning themselves, but then I realised those cups were probably just empty since the inside rim you can see looks as dry as if they had not been any liquid in and certainly nothing recently sipped. Another case of unsuspendable disbelief.
The worst
The chemistry was definitely lacking. Anyway, I don’t think it has any place between two people who has so much more time for smiling. But a couple of aspects were more nauseating. The way that the camera chooses to change angles is so random and dizzying and so frequent and annoying. I think smiling, exposition, a male lead who is forced onto the female lead by circumstances kneeling to the plot, are as much of the romantic movie formula we will see. It is not the only thing that the film leaves in suspens. You wonder what happen to her phone being left outside and the next thing is that she has it with her. You wonder what the missed call from Grace meant and the next thing is not what she sees as you would expect when you look at your phone after a while, but she directly goes to photos.
The sun
Ah, the island. A place of freedom, sun, sand and sea. The film definitely has the shorts for some of its characters. But the real only thing we see of the sun is the way the characters struggle to look at the camera with the sun in their eyes. The lead male spends a lot of the time strainning his eyes to avoid covering his face with his hand because the sun is right on him. Again, betwween the direction and the sunbsequent camera angle choices, the actors are struggling to act.
I think the beach scene is where the editing work shows its real weakness. The way it transitions the camera position and the things it chooses to show make that part painful to watch. One second, they are three, the other second, she is being carried by him and the next second, they are four leaving with the last person who made them 5 at the beginning missing completely.
The non-kiss
When you have a terrible movie. You truly cannot afford to not let the lead kiss already . 12 minutes to the end and 3 near kisses that could have shown some chemistry (or not) had they not been interrupted. To think that a grown woman who should have known better interrupted the first one. A child might be justified and the 3rd is a phone ring. Give us at least that rather than teasing us so. Or are you one of those people who believe a mouth is for eating (and oversmiling – yes, they do exist)?
Love Afloat Third act conflict
There was no need for a conflict. But formula must be fed and so here it is. I frankly consider that the gods of movie themselfves did not want them together with all those missed kissed. And because of those, they did not need a conflict because these were already it.
what to do with their bodies. the [awkwardness is painful to watch
Love Afloat ending: So, when they finally kiss
It is not because I waited so long. It is not because the camera left them so quickluy. It is because it so so unwarranted. I never a minute felt that she felt anything for him. Niot when she browsed their photo more like a thing that is added to prove things. Not when she almost kissed him qhich felt more like that is what pepople do when. Not when she mentioned him to Grace.
They are day and night. She sems to be super energetic#
Love Afloat is a romantic movie available to view on Prime Video at the time of writing.
Verdict
There are so many scenes that breaks any form of the viewer’s suspension of belief that this film is a complete fail. I generally give 5 oout of 10 to the formula based romance but this one fails even that. Most romantic movies know it takes very little to create one. 2 beautiful people, a standard story that has been told many times before and the third act conflict. Those that manage to be more than average take the time to give their characters more development than they are successful as someone says in the film and they are likeable as constant smiling and exposition to that end testify. This one does not bother.
i don’t undrstand anyone who gives this a 5 star even if they like boats or are a friend of the actors. This does not help anyone. It’s almost like they had watched many romantic movies and misread the formula or applied the superficial aspects of the formula with no understanding of their purposes and audience appeal.
The 2 stars
I am giving it 2 stars because there was a movie, some form of story and some cute people. but none of these come together to create something watchable and completing the viewing was excruciating. There is too much smiling, especially for someone who finds out their beloved grand uncle is dead. There are too many fillers. The dialog is stale, the acting is poor, the bodies don’t know what to with themselves, the talking sounds like table reading, the beautiful scenery is mostly missed in the camera work and the overediting (for this kind of movies) favors awkward camera angles and transitions. I could go on but I feel I have already spent too much time on anything to do with this movie.
Everything is wrong… or almost…
Everything is wrong in this movie. The timing, the editing, the acting, the direction, the camera choices, the transitions, the plot or lack of real it, the script. Ok, not everything.
I do think that I would watch those same actors through this script if:
– the camera angles favored both them, longer and more flowing shots, the scenery and the story not what is more practical for them.
– the editing centered around the story and made sure to transition with relevance
– the flow was reconstituted, the script mended and the acting glided on them
-there was more show, a lot less tell and even more direction