Romance in Hawaii

I love Kelley Jakle, but I wonder about casting an obvious blonde in a role where that would be a definite handicap for the character trying to make inroads in the midst of a community with strong cultural values that border on xenophobic at times. The movie even makes references to that by using pejorative labels for people from outside.

As if xenophobia isn't enough negativity, Leah has a competitor for promotion who plays dirty using sexism against her and a boss who plays into it. "Women have to work twice as hard to get half as far." Unfortunately, at a time when Leah should be focusing on business, she decides to concentrate a lot of effort on socializing and Hula and seems to ignore what she was sent for.

Interestingly neither of these things is the focus of the movie. There is a lot of screentime spent on Hulu dancing. This combines with the romantic plot thread, but it also shortchanges that a bit.

From the minute Leah meets the hotel events coordinator, Ikaika, and then the property owner at least part of the general outcome is predictable. This becomes apparent before the midpoint. Another theme that seems to be universal in this type of movie is that of the Evil Developers who want to destroy everything beautiful putting only buildings in their place. (Are all Developers really that stupid?) I thought there were some rough parts in getting there because not everything made sense. To explain what I mean would be spoilers and I don't want to do that.

I love to hear Jakle sing and she does one song,

Dance of the heart, also called romance in hawaii. Leah (kelley jakle) is sent to hawai'i on assignment. With her co-worker. But right from the start, we know that they are there under false pretenses; the property on which they want to bid cannot be sold to a company. And yet they are making offers on behalf of their company. Clearly, there will be a painful confession at some point where the seller realizes a company is the actual buyer. Leah takes informal hula lessons from ikaika (cedric jonathan), one of the islanders working at the hotel. Having been to kauai'i many times, the sunsets are incredible. As well as the deep colors. And the fun people. And the beaches. And the customs. Here, the script needed some fixing up; in the first half of the film, many of the conversations are choppy and awkward. Almost as if some of the lines were missing. Rough editing? The basic story is very sweet, and I admire the lessons and hawai'ian customs that are shared with the viewer. I'm sure not many mainlanders (including myself) knew the rules concerning hula. Having hiked the north shore of na pali, some day I would love to visit the ceremonial hula platforms on the property. It's a beautiful story, and a nice opportunity to share customs, songs, and hula with the mainlanders. So why does leah feign surprise when ikaika learns the truth? We all heard the boss talking about the false premise right at the start. Sure, leah didn't realize who actually owned the land, but she knew from the start they were going in under false pretenses, and that would anger the family. It is a cute story, but the script just needed a tune-up. Directed by nanea miyata.

The best thing about this movie is the background setting. Whether or not it is actually Hawaii, it is beautiful. The actors do a decent job of.pushing the story forward, though the story is predictable and not particularly realistic. The dialogue wasn't the best, but it was serviceable for this genre of movie.

The key issue I have with the movie is that they overdid it on the cultural explanations. I felt like a cult recruit receiving a sales pitch. A little goes a long way, but the writers filled nearly every scene with another explanation of Hawaiian culture. They should have spent more time on the romance. As it was, they made Hawaii the main character, which meant everything else felt undeveloped.

Excellent movie, I live on Oahu in Hawaii and know all of the locations that were filmed very well. Im confused why they added the script saying that it was filmed entirely in Los Angeles, totally not true, it was definitely filmed here in Hawaii. It was neat to see all the locations that we see everyday be in the movie. They even had Romy's shrimp on the north shore. Her Hotel looks like it was the Hilton Hawaiian in Honolulu. There were scenes filmed around Kailua and Waimanalo and possibly one by Makaha. If you ever wanted to see what some of Oahu looks like, check this movie out. The story was excellent, we really enjoyed it and highly recommend!

I wanted to see more Hula dancing, REAL hula. My wife wanted the same.

I could not believe it when this popped up while I was perusing movies in Tubi, I clicked on it out of boredom, and quickly realized there was some Hula in it.

The instruction scenes in it were fantastic, it just needs some more actual Hula dancing with less drama, OR just more dance in it and a longer movie There is finally a movie out like this, Never thought to see it, this should be a GAF selection, no politics or hidden agenda, A little too much drama and a little too little dance

Also the actress should have done at least one more song.