Holiday in the Wild

Holiday in the Wild - a story we have seen millions of times before

The movie starts with a family taking their family photo back in New York. After five minutes, we quickly see the plot of the movie. The family is about to fall apart, and the husband wants to leave his wife. The wife also understood that something was wrong, so she had planned for them to go on a second honeymoon as a consequence of their only son moving out to go to college. The plan of a second honeymoon didn't fall in good soil, and her husband replies with his intention of filing for a divorce. So,what should the wife do (Kristin Davis)? She goes to Africa all by herself!

And if you have read this storyline (which covers the first five minutes of the movie), you can most likely predict the entire movie from here on. I was having fun watching the movie with my wife, and even though we didn't succeed with all our predictions, we still were correct in quite a lot of them!

What makes Holiday in the Wild worth watching?

As I said in the topic, this is a traditional romantic movie, with elephants as a bonus. Because, in Africa, she goes to Zambia, and she takes part in the work at a place for elephants. She falls in love with the elephants, and this is what lifts the movie to a somewhat higher level, simply because of the scenery and the amazing photos of the elephants. So, this is almost like an animal-friendly movie at the same time, and if for sure encourages its viewers to help work for the preservation of animals, and of course, elephants.

In other words, if you just want a romantic movie... this might work. But, if you want a romantic movie that even shows beautiful scenery from Africa and comes with an important message about protecting the animals around us, this should get some nice bonus points.

However, this still shouldn't be considered a great movie... the elephants aren't able to lift it to a great level, but they do manage to take it out from the mud!

Holiday in the Wild conclusion

Rob Lowe and Kristin David do good jobs in their roles. They cannot be blamed, after all, it is little to be done about a weak story in the first place. The movie is a part of the holiday movies at Netflix for the 2019 season, and even though it didn't give me Christmas atmosphere, I still feel curious on what it would be like to celebrate Christmas in a short among elephants in Africa (instead of in cold and with snow in Europe)?

Not at all the best movie, but it can work if you want a family-friendly romantic movie for Chrismas in 2019.

Some humor could have lifted it quite a lot, but unfortunately, the movie didn't give me many laughs either. In other words, a flat movie and the only creatures to touch my soul in the movie were the elephants!

It's getting reasonably close to Christmas so this film is just one of many romantic comedies that is headed our direction in 2019. These films all seem to have a similar progression and everyone knows what is going to happen in the end and this film is not an exception to this rule.

The redeeming quality that this film has is exactly what I mentioned in the title and therefore I think, despite the critical mass-production cookie-cutter format of the film, that it is still worth watching.

I try to avoid major spoilers (as if that was a factor in a movie like this) but if you prefer to enter a film blind then it is better for you to skip this review

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The description that Netflix provides for this movie puts all the pieces in place for you to successfully guess almost all the aspects of this film. The typical nature of the plot doesn't really make the story something even worth getting wrapped up in. As soon as the two meet at the bar about 10 minutes in to the film and have a less-than-perfect introduction I think most people could pause the movie and perhaps guess pretty much the rest of the entire story.

Whatever. I like Kristin Davis and especially Rob Lowe so they get a pass.

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When Derek (Rob Lowe) turns out to be the pilot guide taking her on her luxury safari the following day, exactly zero audience members were surprised (not a spoiler, it's in the trailer.)

What follows is some stunning scenery of a country that I know extremely little about: Zambia. The scenes from the sky in particular are incredible and the ground shots are equally lovely. Those moments alone made the trite storyline a lot more bearable. I'm intentionally not showing them so that you can have some sort of incentive to actually watch this thing.

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One thing I found out upon digging a bit deeper is that this was filmed on location at an actual elephant orphanage in Zambia under very strict controls from a combination of animal-welfare agencies. The utmost care was taken to not take advantage of the animals for the sake of making a film and therefore a lot of the interactions with the animals are actually puppetry and CGI and I honestly couldn't tell when watching (and trust me, I was looking because I love to make fun of these sorts of things.)

The movie has a really great point to make during the very reasonable 80 minute run-time and that is the destruction of wildlife populations and the disconnect that the average modern person has from exactly how dire and real this situation is.

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The film continually takes shots at urban life and they do a very good job of this whenever they transition back to Kate's (Kristin Davis) friends and family in NYC who are stuck in traffic, concerned with consumerism, and depend on technology for everything in their crowded lives. It does seem a bit patronizing, but if their intention was to suggest that "yeah, city life does kinda suck sometimes" I think they nailed that point.

_{from the official [Netflix](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWOA1ZGywLbqmigxE4Qlvuw) channel}

Despite being touted as a Christmas movie it actually contains very little in the way of having really anything to do with Christmas other than about 5 minutes of an African elephant orphanage Christmas party so in that regard I think they cheated a little bit as far as classifying this as a holiday film.

Overall, this movie is as cheesy as the trailer would indicate, but the important message that the film portrays and the great location shots that we are frequented with make the eye-rolling plot pretty bearable. I expected to hate this film, but at the end I had a very different feeling about it than I expected.

My overall rating? 6 / 10

![11tscn.jpg](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/gooddream/FMHnFvui-11tscn.jpg)

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