New Netflix movie by Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth Lonely Planet It had a lot of potential, but one major issue affected its overall quality. Lonely Planet follows the story of Dern’s character, Katherine Loewe, a famous writer with writer’s block who travels to Morocco for a writing retreat. On the trip, she meets Hemsworth’s character, Owen Brophy, who is in an unhappy relationship with his girlfriend Lily, herself an up-and-coming writer.
With the beautiful Moroccan scenery as a backdrop, Katherine and Owen begin to develop feelings for each other, which is complicated for several reasons, including the fact that Owen is still with Lily. The story tends to follow the predictable rhythms of a romantic drama, but this is far from the film’s most significant problem. Instead of, a fundamental problem with Lonely Planet characters negatively affects the entire film.
Every Lonely Planet Supporting Character Fails
Outside of Dern and Hemsworth’s characters, Lonely Planet characters are largely one-dimensional. This is especially true of Owen’s girlfriend, Lily Kemp (Diana Silvers), whose main goal seems to be to juxtapose how great Katherine is with someone who is selfish, cruel, and selfish. This is most evident when Owen and Lily participate in a party game involving guessing literary references, and Lily repeatedly insinuates that Owen is not smart because he doesn’t understand some of the clues.
Presumably the goal is to make the audience feel good about the fact that Owen is cheating on Lily, but this isn’t effective.
As the supportive love interest opposed to Lily’s characterization as a ‘boring’, Katherine steps in and assures him that his clues were not only accurate, but even better than the ones Lily wanted him to use. Presumably the goal is to make the audience feel good about the fact that Owen is cheating on Lily, but this isn’t effective. Lily isn’t the only character to receive this treatment either. Katherine also has an ex-lover on the trip, Ugo Jaconelli (Adriano Giannini), whose main characteristic is still being in love with Katherine.
Dern and Hemsworth are great, but Lonely Planet needed more
Unsurprisingly, Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth are great in Lonely Planet. Both are solid actors and have played attractive love interests in other films. Even taking into account the age difference between Owen and Katherine, which sometimes makes their dynamic a little awkward (like when Katherine calls Owen “child” in the middle of a romantic moment), they have chemistry on screen.
Dern and Hemsworth’s performances simply aren’t enough to make Lonely Planet to work.
Unfortunately, Dern and Hemsworth’s performances aren’t enough to make Lonely Planet work given this problem with the other characters in the film. It feels like the romantic arc between Katherine and Owen comes at the expense of the development of every other character and any plot beyond romance – even those important to Owen and Katherine, like Owen’s complex relationship with his job. Lonely Planet It actually had a lot of potential, but with so many characters being ignored, the film felt like it never got below the surface.