Lonely Planet review, is it just me or are romcoms getting better

Lonely Planet stars Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth in a romcom about a successful writer who goes to a writers’ retreat in Morocco to finish a book. She meets a younger man and everything changes.

Lonely Planet was written and directed by Susannah Grant. She’s written some things I really liked such as Erin Brockovich and Unbelievable, but this is her first ever solo effort at directing a feature film.

Romcoms about older women and younger men are enjoying a moment right now. I especially like this one because Laura Dern doesn’t usually get roles like this. She killed it.

Dern played Katherine Loewe, a well-known writer who was having some personal issues and struggling to finish a new book by the deadline. She joined a group of writers in Morocco. She mostly stayed away from them so she could write.

She did have a conversation with Lily (Diana Silvers), who just published her first book. It was a bestseller. Lily brought her boyfriend Owen (Hemsworth) to the retreat, but spent most of her time talking with and pursuing other writers.

Katherine and Owen got thrown together in various ways and ended up having a full on affair while the other writers partied and cavorted without noticing.

Both of these characters were grown ups with maturity and experience. They knew themselves. There was the inevitable breakup before the happy ending, but I won’t disclose how it happened. I will ask this, however. Seriously? No iCloud? No Dropbox? No flash drive? Seriously?

Morocco is gorgeous and brought many welcome scenic moments to the film. I found Lonely Planet well written and intelligent. Susannah Grant did a good job directing. Overall the film was interesting, fun, and provided a bit of cheer.

I’m seeing a trend lately of romcoms being better than average. Normally I rate a romcom at 5/10 simply because they are basically all the same. They bring a bit of happiness into your day and are enjoyable, but each new one is very like the last one. A few have earned a 7/10 from me recently (for example Nobody Wants This). This is one of those.

It’s streaming on Netflix.