Lost in Paradise on the Hallmark Channel is a new love story about two strangers from L.A., one a high-powered fashion exec and the other a chef (Lacey Chabert and Ian Harding, respectively), who head to Fiji on a private jet, each one on a mission to help salvage their careers. Spoiler alert: their plane crash lands before it reaches its destination, and all four people on board wash up on a deserted beach and have to fend for themselves. After the two pilots head out to find help, romance blossoms between our main characters as they fend off snakes, pirates and all manner of threats.
The Gist: Lacey Chabert plays Sophia Tierra, the lead designer of her namesake fashion brand, Tierra. When Sophia’s ex-husband Mario, who’s still on the board at Tierra, reveals that he plans to sell the business if he can get the rest of the company’s shareholders on board, Sophia decides to travel to Fiji to meet with one of the shareholders and convince them not to vote for the sale, which would snatch creative control of the business away from Sophia. On a moment’s notice, Sophia books a private jet to Fiji and heads to the airport without hesitation.
Meanwhile, Max (Ian Harding) is a sous chef in Los Angeles who has always dreamed of his own restaurant but finds himself toiling away under a pompous celebrity chef. He hasn’t let go of his dream but after a failed pop-up restaurant went south, he feels like he’s got no business acumen. When his friend Julian tells him he met a billionaire who wants to invest in a restaurant, Max reluctantly agrees to meet the rich guy, but he lives in, you guessed it, Fiji. Julian, a private jet pilot, arranges for Max to travel on his next flight out, but the catch is that Max has to pretend he’s the flight attendant. This is, of course, Sophia’s flight.
Sophia realizes something is off about Max (as a chef, he makes a great cocktail but can’t figure out how to close the cabin door). But before they can get into any of that, the plane suffers a malfunction and is forced to crash land in the middle of the ocean, where they eventually wash ashore on a deserted island. The pilots, Julian and Lance, take a raft to find help and soon they make it to civilization and end up leading a search party to find Max and Sophia, but it takes a few days. In that time, Max and Sophia adapt to their surroundings (his skills as a chef help feed them, her skills as a seamstress give them shelter and protective clothing). As they fend off sharks and snakes and an actual gang of pirates hiding out in the jungle, they start to fall for each other, leaving them to wonder, what’s going to happen between them if they ever get rescued?
Hallmark Media
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? It’s impossible not to think you’ve seen this movie before, and that’s because there have been plenty of movies about romances that blossom in the tropics or while stranded on a desert island, like The Blue Lagoon, Swept Away, Six Days Seven Nights, and my personal favorite, Romancing The Stone.
Performance Worth Watching: I couldn’t help but feel like James Trevena, who plays Julian the pilot, is a long-lost Hemsworth brother. For that reason alone, he was eminently watchable.
Sex And Skin: As the days on the island drag, Max and Sophia end up hacking their clothes, removing sleeves and refashioning them to be more island-appropriate, but there’s nothing too revealing or sexy to speak of.
Our Take: Action-adventure romantic comedies are one of my favorite genres, probably because at a young age, I recorded Romancing the Stone when it was airing on network television one night, and I memorized it by watching it daily for the next year and it’s a part of me now. So, sure, I might be biased because I have a soft spot for movies like this, but Lacey Chabert and Ian Harding make Lost in Paradise a fun, if not kinda G-rated version of Romancing the Stone. (Listen, no one can top the Kathleen Turner-Michael Douglas-Danny DeVito combo, but that’s a high bar to clear, but Chabert and Harding do their best.)
The big difference between Lost in Paradise and other movies like it is the tone, though. Chabert and Harding are two of Hallmark’s most charismatic leading actors; they exude niceness and warmth and their chemistry is heightened by how kind they both are. (Even when Chabert’s Sophia is supposed to be at the peak of her powerful, boss-lady persona, she’s never harsh or cruel, instead, she’s basically the fictional version of that time Taylor Swift gave all of her drivers $100,000 bonuses.) There’s something to be said for watching a film about people like that – sure, they’re in peril for a lot of the movie, and sure, Max has to confess to Sophia that he’s not really a qualified flight attendant, but they immediately realize they’re in this together and rather than argue, the film sets them up to collaborate rather than to clash and this film is better for it.
The film fizzles out a bit once it’s revealed that they’ve been stranded a couple miles from a beautiful beach resort this whole time (the pirates who were hiding out on the same beach as them? Actors who were role-playing as part of an elaborate game the resort set up!) but ultimately, the romantic relationship that develops while they’re stranded makes the whole thing worth it.
Our Call: Lost in Paradise is a fun, tropical adventure, but it owes most of its success to the chemistry between its two leads, Lacey Chabert and Ian Harding. STREAM IT!
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.