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,
