The fact that Love is in the Air is a better rom-com than Ticket to Paradise doesn’t mean it’s any good. TTP was absolute shit.
This flick, also shot in Queensland, is very basic rom-com fare, corny in parts, and if writers Adrian Powers, Caera Bradshaw and Katharine E. McPhee set aside an afternoon to throw this storyline together, let’s all hope they had backup plan for something else to do after about 3.40ish.
Delta Goodrem plays feisty independent pilot Dana Randall, who for some inexplicable reason is very proud of Fullerton Airways, the charter company she’s apparently running into the ground in the Whitsundays with her dad Jeff (Roy Billing) and which boasts one dodgy seaplane.
Out from London comes William (Joshua Sasse) whose mission from his over-bearing and disappointed dad is to prepare the unprofitable business for closure. Well! Dana’s going to find out his real intentions’ isn’t she? There’s your first Pills and Moans moment of the several clashes that normally come with any rom-com worth its salt.
William accompanies Dana on the unprofitable part of the business she loves: helping local communities with the supplies they need to survive and bugger the tourist dollar, hey?
Before you know it, Dana and William are splashing each other in the shallows like two horny kids at Schoolies. An absurd moment, for sure, but no worse that the drop bears dialogue delivered by mechanic BFF Nikki (Steph Tisdell) as she tries to scare off William.
Perhaps it’s when the writers realised that their storyline was having trouble getting off the ground that a cyclone is introduced for dramatic effect. Some cyclone! Pffft! This bugger couldn’t have blown the froth off a Great Northern schooner.
The cyclone at least has enough puff to extinguish any love blossoming between our two leads, and William returns to London and our Fullerton Airways family ready themselves for their unprofitable business to buckle under.
Some reviewers have blamed Goodrem for the averageness of this rom-com vehicle but she does okay. Delta’s pretty enough and luckily the company hanger has a piano in one corner and she does belt out a couple of nice numbers including her hit. Only joking!
As this oh-so-average rom-com reaches its denouement, the storyline does eventually manage a little heat and passion as William finally stands up to his dad in that London boardroom. Which is a reasonable achievement seeing the George Clooney/Julia Roberts vehicle mentioned above had all the passion and heat of a flat torch battery.
Sadly, William finally finding the balls he’s lost over Dana is not enough to push this rom-com into the “I’ll have another look at it down the track” category for this self-confessed rom-com enthusiast.
The Aussie company behind this project apparently pumps these things out almost as regularly as a Peter FitzSimons’ historical tome so we can only hope they do much better next time.
Don Gordon-Brown
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