Finding Love in San Antonio

I specifically chose to watch this movie because it was set in San Antonio, probably my favorite city to visit. I thought it would be fun to see a romcom set in such a beautiful city. I did enjoy the story, the characters. I enjoyed watching it but I was surprised by how little of the beautiful city I was expecting to see was shown. Even the river walk scene seemed dull and unimpressive. At first, I thought it was just poor cinematography. How else could they have made such a beautiful city appear so mediocre? And I say this as a country girl. I generally don't enjoy cities at all, San Antonio and New Orleans being the exceptions. So, I decided to watch the credits to see exactly what places it was filmed at. Well! Lo and behold, this movie was not filmed in San Antonio, Texas at all! It was filmed in Kansas City, Missouri! No offense to Missouri, but goodness gracious, if you are going to set a movie in a specific city, with that city's name in the title, at least make sure you film some of the city in it! I think this movie would have been so much better with the backdrop of the actual San Antonio. Bummer.

The premise is save the family restaurant vs find fame in far away Europe. Adela does have several factors at work pulling her emotions. In addition to the two already mentioned she is struggling with memories of her late husband. Her daughter, Fabi, is strongly opposed to leaving. Her mother-in-law wants to retire and under her management the restaurant isn't doing that well. And Adela is forming a relationship with David which gives her mixed feelings by itself.

The acting seems very rough. The cast appears to be almost entirely Latino. Except for greetings and endearments, almost none of the script is in Spanish. It's in English. Some of them speak clearer English than others. Actually most of that is with Marisa Del Portillo who plays Soccorro, the mother-in-law, who is a major character with a lot of lines. Her delivery is totally authentic, but I found it very distracting. It's hard to fault the actor or the movie for this, but it is distracting. Valentina Izarra as Adela speaks excellent English but it seemed like her acting was off just a little. Isabella Rivera-Gandulla was excellent as Fabi.

I wasn't impressed with the chemistry between Izarra and George Akram. Perhaps some of that was in the fact that there screen time together was not quite as much as I would have liked. It almost felt like their relationship was not the primary story.

The story is strongly family oriented.

Charming, but at times a little too predictable. Nonetheless, film shows professional production values and overall good performances by all. Nice to see a movie set in my hometown with Latino cast reflecting one the most important facets of the community...Family.