Aloha Heart

First, I wish I had a shot at someone as beautiful as 39 year old Taylor Cole when I was 25 (the age of Kanoa Goo who plays her love interest). She's absolutely stunning and a magnetic performer. Manu was very lucky to have Sara show an interest in him. And this just in- not every relationship needs to lead to marriage.

Many successful mainstream romance movies have featured far more dramatic age gaps between the leads when the male is the older actor. For example, Richard Gere was 40 and Julia Roberts was just 22 in "Pretty Woman." He was still 18 years older than her when they starred in "Runaway Bride." And he was 26 years older than Winona Ryder when they made "Autumn in New York." Catherine Zeta-Jones was just 28 when she filmed "Entrapment" with a 67 year old Sean Connery. Jack Nicholson was 60 when he starred opposite 34 year old Helen Hunt in "As Good As It Gets". Cary Grant was 17 years older than his costar Deborah Kerr in "An Affair to Remember." Humphrey Bogart was 17 years older than Ingrid Bergman in the classic "Casablanca." Tom Cruise was at least 20 years older than his last two love interests in the last 2 Mission Impossible movies.

And Leonardo DiCaprio famously only dates women half his age. The list of male stars who do the same is long. So what's wrong with a younger male being attracted to an older female and vice versa? The better question might be who puts a 25 year old in charge of a lush high end beachfront resort hotel in Hawaii?

Manu is supposedly the manager of his family's hotel and yet he's usually off playing with Sara. Or standing around looking concerned or confused. And she's there for a destination wedding, but spends more of her time with Manu instead of the bride and her bridesmaids.

The script also overplays the ecologist angle. I support efforts to combat climate change and develop more sustainable energy sources but Sara is, initially at least, painted as a bit of a caricature. And it was never really clear what she was supposed to do to help Manu run the hotel. Build a desalination plant? Buy him more electric golf carts?

It's all very lovely to look at, but the story didn't really support more than a vacation hookup. And Hallmark isn't in the business of making movies about anything less than Big Love. That's not what we got here in the few days these two knew each other.

Sara Hamilton (Taylor Cole) is a workaholic water quality ecologist without a personal life. She reluctantly goes to Hawaii to be her friend's maid of honor. Manu (Kanoa Goo) is the new manager of his family's smaller hotel resort. She needs help with the incomplete wedding plans and the hotel needs work.

Hawaii always looks beautiful especially from a resort beach. It's great that she's concerned about water. Hawaii has water concerns despite its lush tropics popular image.

My biggest problem is that she complains a lot about random stuff. Why the keys? Maybe she can explain better or just forget about the keys. She needs to concentrate on the wedding and the water issue and nothing else. She should keep all the little comments to herself and not in the movie. Anyways, most people aren't watching Hallmark for that.

I don't get the mechanics of the pool. He actually drops the ball for no apparent reason. Is the ecologist really going to fix the pool? Just let the guy fix the pool.

He's going way too hard on 'family'. What are we? Fast and the Furious? If he wants to save the resort and the island, I actually want to know his concrete plans and stop with the keys. It feels like Hallmark is trying something, but it is still Hallmark and they can't do more with the writing.

Hawaii is definitely the star of Aloha Heart.

Hallmark knows how to sell destination movies even with the weakest storylines-sad to say, this one's pretty weak. Watching it now and I swear they stole the Hawaii wedding plot line from Hallmark's Hidden Gem movie-also filmed in Hawaii. At least the lead actors were around the same age and had great chemistry.

Not the case here. Taylor Cole is a wonderful actor but too mature for the male lead of this movie even with the long hair extensions.

Hallmark has a problem with their popular leading ladies-they're all hitting forty and over and can't sell being the young professional -fill in the blank-trying to get that big promotion. When they do that they end up doing what Taylor Cole is doing in this movie-trying to act younger than she is.

And Hallmark needs to sign Kanou Goo. He's a keeper.

6.5 stars.

It's not a bad film really. The plot is good enough to keep an audience around and the scenery is breathtaking. It's about an ecologist who is of course very very adamant about the environment and all that good stuff. There are some glaring inconsistencies. First of all, she is complaining about the gas powered automobiles, but then again she flies all around the world throughout the year. If she was truly an environmentalist, she would take a rowboat. Let's face it, you cannot be an eco-activist without hypocrisizing everything. The male actor does a good job and I liked his acting style. There are some pretty mundane scenes and it doesn't take much intelligence to follow 'Aloha Heart', but somehow there is an entertaining aspect to it. The acting is not bad. Who knows, but it was enough to raise my rating from a dismal 5.5 up to a 6.5.

This new Hallmark production offers a beautiful actress, Taylor Cole, playing Sara, a conservationist hell-bent to save the world, who finds romance in a tropical paradise. So, what could go wrong? One gets the first hint at the beginning, when Sara first reaches her luscious resort destination and is kindly welcomed by the handsome manager with a lei of flowers. In a thoughtful display of good manners, her first words are to inquire what kind of recycling they have in place. Soon after, when Manu, the manager, offers to take her outside the resort to find a venue for her friend's wedding rehearsal, she thanks him complaining that the vehicle uses a lot of gas, further wondering if they own a large fleet. The movie does not specify whether Sara, to avoid using fuel, has reached the Hawaii by windsurf or swimming through the ocean. Unfortunately, these are most of the spice in the entire film, if one excludes the overplayed conflict between Manu and his overbearing, unpleasant parents. The rest of the story has no drama, very lukewarm romantic or emotional content, and questionable chemistry between the lead characters. Essentially, it feels that somebody at Hallmark has decided that an inane script of overused banalities can be salvaged by a superficial "save the planet" message and the background of a tropical island.

The players have been miscast. Kanoa Goo appears, and likely is, much younger than Taylor Cole. The rest are unimportant, as all play roles with no substance or depth. By age and personality, Greta Thunberg would have made a better match for the main role. As a peeve of my own, I regret that Taylor Cole, whom I have always liked, seems to get less significant roles each year that goes by. I may be wrong, yet I feel she could manage more mature and deep characters and a chance to work in more intelligent productions.

Next time Hallmark plans another such exotic adventure, they should devote more space to views of the nature. At least, when the viewers get bored and fall asleep, they may be lulled by tropical dreams.