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Resort to Love Review: Christina Milian's movie is a more realistic, mature take on romantic comedies
Resort to Love is a realistic story about love and all its messy emotions without ever being overly dramatic and is backed by a fine cast, led by the charismatic Christina Milian.
Resort to Love
Resort to Love Cast: Christina Milian, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Cristiani Pitts
Resort to Love Director: Steven Tsuchida
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Resort to Love Stars: 3/5
Imagine My Best Friend's Wedding; albeit, the groom ain't your childhood BFF but your ex-fiance who took a runaway ticket, breaking off your wedding and promptly finding himself a new 'love of his life.' What's worse? You are the wedding singer! That's Resort to Love in a nutshell, including the gorgeous landscape of Mauritius which tickles our travelling bones to a hundred. However, with countless different variations when it comes to romantic comedies, how does Resort to Love fare in today's day and age of a no-nonsense, reality-based audience? Let's find out.
While Resort to Love may sound like those recent 'guilty pleasure' reality series (cue Love Island or The Bachelor-ette!) where excruciatingly good-looking people go on a pursuit to find love, it's more about excruciatingly good-looking people circling love by finding closure from their past and enabling your own independence in the present as an uplifting 'part and parcel of life' process. Erica (Christina Milian) is a struggling musician, who is finally inches away from her long, overdue big break but has dreams smashed quite literally. It also doesn't help that she's harbouring a broken heart over her ex-fiance Jason (Jay Pharoah), who breaks off their wedding and moves far away. To cheer up Erica out of her personal but mostly professional funk, her persuasive bestie Amber (Tymberlee Hill) convinces her to travel to the criminally crystal blue shores of Mauritius and work as a luxurious resort's official singer.
Amber did consciously forget to mention that Erica is also hired to be a wedding singer, which is the last thing she'd want. Or so she'd expect! After an electric and classy Survivor performance montage which showcases Erica finally getting her groove back and having a 'wet' encounter with a handsome stranger named Caleb (Sinqua Walls), tada, comes the big obvious reveal that the dashing ex-military hunk is actually Jason's brother. Jason just happens to land upon the same resort as his ex for it to be his and his new fiancée Beverly's (Christiani Pitts) wedding destination. The reach of social media manipulation is truly terrifying! Given how she never got closure to really move on, Erica is conflicted between her past love and the beckoning of a new one.
While one would assume this to be a typical rom-com with four eccentric leads, there's a sense of realism and maturity attached where the emotions aren't overly dramatised or heightened as we're used to seeing in this genre. From the very get-go, writers Tabi McCartney and Dana Schmalenberg take the swift approach of storytelling where Erica is the main character of her story and everyone else plays their parts just right. There's also the right semblance of balance between romance and comedy, which is carefully crafted and not tacky, and credit for that goes to Steven K. Tsuchida's direction as well.
When it comes to the performances, Christina is a knockout as Erica, mixing sassy with the right amounts of vulnerability. A wise woman once sang: "We're happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time," and Milian manages to emote all these emotions, sometimes even at the same time. Her chemistry with Sinqua is tantalising from their very first encounter with the latter playing the charming lead to a t. While Jay provides some obliged laughter points, he also manages to emote Jason's confused feelings with honesty. However, the true scene-stealer is Christiani as Beverly, simply because, she could have been caricaturish, dimwit of a second female lead but rather, you end up rooting for her the most. You're going to be begging Erica and Jason to make up their mind because Beverly deserves a happy ending of her own. Whether it be as a couple or even alone!
A special mention to T. J. Power as Barrington, Erica's band member who provides the right fillers at just the right time and doesn't overstay his welcome. Even Tymberlee pops up just when Erica needs her for a pick me up while Sylvaine Strike as Erica's prim and proper resort manager Claire adds some cheesy but witty humour, nonetheless.
A special mention goes out to Danielle Hollowell's costume design, particularly when it comes to Erica's smashing outfits, fit for every mood, and Caleb's tight-fit floral and pastel combinations. Even Greg Gardiner's cinematography and Emma E. Hickox's editing do complete justice to the tropical paradise, i.e. Mauritius, enabling our wanderlust hearts at a time of a global pandemic when it's nearly impossible to travel.
You'd wonder why the great Alicia Keys is amongst the producers of Resort to Love? Well, it makes perfect sense because it's not just a rom-com, but a musical romantic comedy. From Gloria Gaynor (as mentioned above, a glittery wig rendition of Survivor) to Nicki Minaj (Pitts shows off her rapping skills with Super Bass), homage is paid to the loveliest of tunes which perfectly symbolise the complex yet relatable equation between the four characters and their equally complicated love lives. However, it's the tribute to Alicia, herself, that plays a special significance with No One being the most important and with equal measure. As an accomplished singer-songwriter, Christina manages to infuse her own charisma to these cover tracks, which oscillate aptly with Laura Karpman's quirky music score.
In finality, Resort to Love is an endearing watch where rom-coms are forced to grow up and showcase 'love' in all its 'resorts'. All the pun, obviously, intended!
