Movie Review :: Hallmark Channel’s Love on the Amazon

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It’s rare for Hallmark Channel to give us a total dud of a movie, but this week’s ‘Winter Escape’ never looked promising even from the previews. Sadly, it wastes the talents of its leads and gives us one of the most improbable romances we’ve yet to see on the channel … and that has started to become a common theme lately, which is worrisome. Is Hallmark Channel due for a shake-up to its formula?

Love on the Amazon stars Grey’s Anatomy alum Jaicy Elliott as school Vice Principal Claire (last name apparently not important enough to appear in the credits) whose sister Amelia (Persephone Brada-Redman) is off-grid somewhere in the rain forest of the Amazon (though set in Brazil, the movie was filmed in Peru) doing her ecological studies. Amelia has been waiting for news on a grant and Claire has promised to let her know when it comes … except Claire carelessly throws Amelia’s mail on a table every day and doesn’t notice for several days that the urgent letter is laying on the floor. When she does finally see it, Amelia has a week to sign the paperwork and return it or else she loses all of her funding and that is the end of her studies, and it will all be Claire’s fault. Luckily, Claire has about two weeks before she has to be back to work, and she is certain she can get to her sister before the deadline so she hires, online, a boat owner in Brazil known as ‘Danny Delivers’. Danny (Rafael de la Fuente) is more like the FedEx of the Amazon River, delivering packages not people. Claire is none-too-thrilled when she arrives and he refuses to take her to her sister so she books another cruise up the river, misunderstanding the language, thinking they will arrive at their destination in days instead of weeks. She has to debark that ship, and Danny just happens to be at the same landing so he finally gives in and agrees to take her to her destination — because he needs the money to repair a part on his boat. Danny’s crew, Milly (Raissa Xavier) and Bruno (Omar Palaez), are less-than-thrilled to have this ‘tourist’ on their boat, with Milly being particularly surly, responding ‘No English’ every time Claire tries to talk to her.

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After a trip through the rapids reminiscent of Disney’s Jungle Cruise movie — the most exciting part of this film — the journey meanders for what feels like weeks instead of days, with Bruno finally quitting at one stop, and Claire agreeing to take on his duties just so they can get a move on. Milly is put in charge of teaching her what she needs to know, and Claire learns Milly is also studying to be a captain herself, so the two finally bond and help each other out, with Claire passing her tests to Danny’s satisfaction while they sit at a dock for another day. Seriously, there is no real time delineation in this movie. After what feels like three months rather than three days, they finally arrive at Amelia’s basecamp and … she’s not there, so now Claire and Danny have to take another boat ride in a canoe to the next location. After spending the night in the jungle, where Claire and Danny make a wish at some mystical wishing tree, and then Claire hears her sister calling to her (an odd plot point that goes absolutely nowhere), they finally get to the camp the next day and … Amelia isn’t there! So another canoe ride finally gets them there and Claire starts jumping up and down in the small craft, which somehow manages not to flip over, and Amelia is finally able to sign her paperwork. It also turns out, as we learned in a subplot earlier, that Danny used to work with Amelia but he had to leave to help keep his ailing father’s delivery business afloat (pun intended), and he’s nervous to face his former boss, thinking she hates him for ditching the team. She doesn’t, of course, and now with the grant she has enough money to bring him back on if he wants. But he also overhears Claire talking to her sister about him, saying wonderful things but also facing the reality that she has to return home so what’s the point of starting some already non-existent romance? So Danny decides rather than have his heart broken, he’s just going to slip away and get back to his life, leaving a cassette of his father’s favorite music with Claire (pretty bold assuming Claire even has a cassette player in this day and age). But it may take some encouragement from Amelia to convince the two they belong together … even though we’ve seen zero evidence of that for the previous 80 minutes. Spoiler alert: it ends with Claire taking a year sabbatical to stay with Danny and work with him and her sister, leaving us all to wonder what happens a year from now.

I’m going to be up front here and say I was not excited for this movie from the first preview because even in those clips it seemed there was zero chemistry between Claire and Danny. I hoped for the best, because sometimes the scenes Hallmark shows out of context don’t give you a lot to go on, but I was expecting to be disappointed. And when you go into something with the lowest of expectations, things usually turn out better than you thought they would. This one met my expectations, unfortunately. Writer Juliana Wimbles has not managed to create an engaging character in Claire. She really isn’t the most likable character in a Hallmark movie. It’s not that she’s a terrible person — although she does come off as a bit entitled at times — it’s just that she’s very hard to relate to and her personality is just too bland as she buries her face in her books, and loves to quote them, which is annoying. One of the more eye-rolling scenes has Danny making a stop for a delivery at a village and Claire is talking to the children and giving them a book … but they don’t speak English! Only after that does she learn there is a school where they are learning English and she offers the teacher another book to help them out. A book (meanwhile, she has a suitcase full of books on the boat for her sister, who probably has very little time to sit down and read). After that scene at the rapids at the start of the journey — which surprisingly did not look like it was shot against a blue screen, everything looking shockingly real — one would have thought that this movie would actually be more in the spirit of the Disney movie, but it just moves so slow that it tries your patience as you keep trying to guess how many actual days have passed when Claire is very adamant that she has three days to reach her sister. THREE! Credit, or blame, for the film’s slow pace also goes to director Colin Theys, who manages to use the locations well (one has to stop short of calling them ‘spectacular’ as it’s generally a muddy looking river or a jungle) but can’t seem to get his lead actors to generate any chemistry for that romance to pay off at the end.

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As for those leads, Jaicy Elliott tries to give it her all to make Claire interesting and engaging, but either she could not figure out a way to do it or her director had little input on her performance. She just comes off as a bit self-centered — granted, her trip is taking longer than anyone expected so she has every right to be pushy — only becoming engaging when she meets the local children and finally when she and Milly can bond over their shared learning experiences. But she never seems to have anything but mutual respect and a friendship with Danny as there is not a single romantic moment between them until they finally reach Amelia and have a dance together. There is just nothing appealing about her character no matter how hard Elliott tries. Now I have been a fan of Rafael de la Fuente from his six seasons as Sam on the Dynasty reboot, so it was nice to finally see him tackle a new role, this one very different from Sam on many levels. But he actually does a good job of making Danny endearing as he stands up for Claire as his crew does all they can to make her feel unwelcome. He’s always kind and charming, and he seems to have really good relationships with his regular customers. He knows his way around the river and through the jungles, he never talks condescendingly to Claire, and his smile can light up the jungle. But try as he might, not even the charm he oozes can overcome the brotherly vibe the character was given by the writer. I actually thought that maybe he had a thing with Milly by the way she was acting towards Claire. But if anything can make the movie watchable, it’s de la Fuente. Maybe team him with Jonathan Bennett in a Christmas movie next time.

The only other major characters who appear in the bulk of the movie are Milly and Bruno. Omar Palaez plays Bruno with a bit of a short temper, angry that his boss is allowing that woman to travel on their boat (which is Danny’s boat, so Omar really has no say). He just does his best to ignore Claire while he does his job, but he finally has enough and quits halfway through the movie. Raissa Xavier manages to make Milly a not terrible character, even though she treats Claire badly at first. The way she says ‘No English’ to her all the time is actually a bit funny, but she also gets to show Milly grow and quickly bond with Claire as she teaches her how to tie ropes, and then Claire offers to help her study for her captain test. Once they become friends, these two have the most genuine relationship in the entire movie. Persephone Brada-Redman shows up for a few minutes as Amelia, and her job is to be the big sister/mother figure to Claire (and Danny for that matter) offering words of advice to both of them. She does a good job with the little screen time she has. Ramsay Ross plays the father of Claire and Amelia, Mr. Hall (oh, so they do have a last name!), but for some reason all of his dialogue sounds and looks dubbed with the voice just slightly out-of-sync. That may be the case if Ross has an accent and they wanted him to sound American … and there is a mysterious credit at the end for Sewell Whitney for providing a voiceover (there was no narrator for the film), so one can surmise he dubbed Ross’ voice.

I really wanted to like Love on the Amazon because I am a fan of de la Fuente, but the movie just disappointed on almost every level except for his charm holding things up. The journey just felt like it would never end, the romance was non-existent, most of the characters were hard to connect with, but the production was decent (as opposed to director Theys’ Polar Opposites which had some obviously cringey bluescreen shots from the deck of a boat) although there’s nothing in the movie that would make one want to visit the Amazon for any kind of cruise. This one just ran aground like Danny’s boat and it was never able to recover. But please, Hallmark, give de la Fuente another shot with a better script and a co-star he can really bond with.

Love on the Amazon has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, is rated TV-G, and is streaming on Hallmark+.

Preview | Love on the Amazon

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Listen to songs featured in Love on the Amazon – Vuelve a Mi by Rafael H. Sarmiento-Rengifo & Gustavo J. Alcantara-Ramirez, Vento Leve by Mauricio Yazigi & Peter Neff, The Way She Moves by Bill McGuffie and Los Maestros del Desorden by Toño Barrio