For every “Babygirl” (sexy, smart) and “The Idea of ​​You” (sexy, fun) there is an “A Family Affair” (not sexy, not smart, not fun). At least, that’s how it feels in the year of our lord 2024, which is positively (well, mostly) plagued by age-gap romances. And they’re not slowing down yet! This week: Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth (Certainly) take on Susannah Grant’s ‘Lonely Planet’.

While Grant’s film contains certain elements necessary for the genre (such as casting a few likable, capable stars who generate real heat), the film is also prone to falling into just as many bad habits and wishy-washy tropes synonymous with romance on the big screen. It helps a bit to set the film in a lavish setting – ‘Lonely Planet’ is largely set in Morocco – but the overly glossy look and feel of the travel-focused film tends to push it into an awkwardly anonymous environment . This could have taken place anywhere and felt exactly the same, which is bad for a film that relies so heavily on the seductive power of travel.

It doesn’t necessarily start there either. Bestselling author Katherine (Dern) is not so much seduced by the idea of ​​travel as by the idea of ​​getting away from her regular life. She’s newly homeless (her missing luggage adds another nice point) and desperate to finish her latest book. She’s left America for a writers’ retreat in Morocco, so lavish and so accommodating that you almost have to wonder what the catch is (like so much else in Grant’s script there isn’t one). Despite the stunning setting and the sheer number of fellow writers (there’s a Scandinavian crime writer and a pickled French novelist and a sassy old grand dame, and more), Katherine isn’t a team player, and she’s not at all interested in cocktails. excursions or conversations by the pool. She has to to write.

Unfortunately, she’s not the only person at the retreat who feels like the odd one out: There’s also Owen (Hemsworth), a private equity guy who has accompanied his old girlfriend Lily (Diana Silvers) to the retreat, where the newly minted It Girl of Beach Reads hopes to start a second novel. Many of Grant’s supporting characters are given very little grace on the page (and even less on screen), and it’s Silvers who suffers the worst of it. Her Lily seems sweet, friendly and nervous at first – enough to make audience members who know what’s going to happen to Katherine and Owen wonder how exactly we’re going to get rid of her – before Grant turns her into a raging bitch as plots demand It.

We’re meant to understand that Owen feels a little left out because he’s not a writer, and while, yes, the rest of the group likes to talk about their work, their questions are extremely banal, mostly related to when someone has their book written or how long it took them. Maybe Owen feels left out because these people are so terribly boring. Even a humiliating game of literature-based charades doesn’t help any of them seem super intelligent (one of the answers is ‘The Kamasutra’, for chrissakes) and only makes us root more for Owen, who is on the loose . ends all the time.

This may sound like a bit of table-setting, and it is, because while “Lonely Planet” is only 94 minutes, much of it is devoted to laying on thick different subplots, machinations, confusions, tropes, tricks and more. (We haven’t even touched on Owen’s problems with his job, Katherine’s recently ended relationship, or the incredibly misguided affair Lily is clearly about to have, but that’s all there too.) We need to skip ahead pipes, a broken engine, empty Microsoft Word pages, open-air market walks and a terribly embarrassing hash-laced dance party before you get to the actual point of (and the best part of!) ‘Lonely Planet’: the romance between Katherine and Owen.

Absolutely none of this is worth watching without a central love affair that brings some heat and emotion, and Dern and Hemsworth deliver on that promise, even if it takes far too long to get into. However, even that element raises some questions. Oddly enough — and like its Netflix brethren, “A Family Affair” — the age difference at the center of “Lonely Planet” isn’t so much a topic of actual conversation as another element that spins happily around the rest of the action. The only indication that someone has that too noted that Katherine and Owen are from different generations is an entry in Act Three by Katherine that temporarily turns things upside down, just as (ack!) they are finally starting to take shape.

This delayed gratification allows “Lonely Planet” to experience a revival, with Katherine and Owen’s finally fulfilled attraction still simmering as the expected plot moves all tick by quickly. But what would this have looked like without all that slogging? Definitely sexier, definitely more fun. Smarter too.

Grade: C+

“Lonely Planet” will stream on Netflix starting Friday, October 11.

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