Champagne Problems: With An Accurate Title, This Movie Had Issues

This holiday movie follows the journey of Sydney Price (Minka Kelly), a driven American executive who travels to Paris in the hopes of recruiting a new champagne brand to her company, but she ends up falling in love with the heir to the chateau's empire, Henri Cassell (Tom Wozniczka).

It has the essence of a classic Hallmark movie, with brightly hued cinematography that blinds and characters who defy all logistics to talk with strangers. Speaking of, the first meeting between the leads, where everything is supposed to feel electric and consuming, just felt lackluster. The acting was stiff and there was very little chemistry that couldn't be blamed on the language barrier. Now, I'm not so naive as to think a movie of this ilk is rooted in realism, but who would trauma dump to a complete stranger? I still possess my childhood fear of the aptly titled "stranger danger". It didn't work for me, sadly setting the bar pretty low for the rest of the movie.

The love story, if you could call it that, was the entire purpose of this film and yet I still felt like there wasn't enough substance to it. Scenes between them were so quick and bland that I couldn't believe there was depth to this relationship at all. Their interactions were messy, with constant misunderstandings that were solved by simply staring into each other's eyes (who needs therapists or conflict resolution seminars?). The story was rushed, underdeveloped, and so cliche my teeth were gnashing together. While I can typically handle the stereotypes, I can't if they're not done well.

The only stereotype that was done relatively well in this movie was Roberto Salazar's (Sean Amsing) character. Although a bit one dimensional, primarily existing to champion the main characters' love, he was successfully funny. Was he Kevin Hart level funny? I wouldn't go that far, but the actor did bring a fun, energetic panache to the character. My only wish is that writers would stop shoving gay characters into a rigid box of being used as comedic relief in straight love stories. The funniest thing about this entire movie happened before I even pressed play; it was grouped under a section that Netflix titled "Help Me Believe In Love Again". I would never trust it to do that, and if it did for you, I'd be little concerned for your standards.