A Perfect Pairing Goes Down Under

A Perfect Pairing sees a hard-working LA wine company exec travel to Australia and do whatever she can in hopes of landing a client.

This film is the latest film to be the Netflix movie of the week. How long it stays in the conversation or makes it at all depends. There’s quite a bit of competition this weekend but the film has a head start by launching on Thursday. It’s a genius move on the streamer’s part–launch on Thursday rather than Friday. Maybe this will become the new normal for Netflix rather than wait until Friday? We’ll see. But in terms of quality, it’s just…fine. It is not a film that will blow audiences away and this goes for fans of Victoria Justice, too. Rom-com movies are so predictable that they either become generic or find a catch that gives a film a fresh quality about it. In terms of tone, it’s not that different from Justice’s recent Netflix film, Afterlife of the Party, back in September.

The gist of the film is Lola (Victoria Justice) quits her job at a LA wine company in order to start her own. Because of her work ethic, she sets out to Australia to land Vaughn Family Wines. However, they just do not have an interest in working with a start-up company. When Lola hears about a vacancy on their sheep farm, she ends up volunteering for the two weeks. Listen, she knows she isn’t cut out for this type of grunt work. She’s an executive, not manual labor. However, getting to know farm manager Max (Adam Demos) is what keeps her from not quitting. Things that will do wrong…do go wrong, including the truck breaking down after she quits. No airport for Lola…at least not yet. Lola starts studying up on the Vaughn family history and finds the motivation to keep going.

But like any short trip to Australia for work, it soon becomes something more. Lola starts to see something in Max and he starts falling for her. The thing about Max is that he’s still hiding is true self from Lola. If you’ve seen one rom-com movie, you’ve seen them all. By not opening up until it’s too late, Max ends up screwing everything up. Alas, he learns his lesson but it’s too late.

There’s beauty to be seen in the vast Australian landscapes. However, this isn’t enough to elevate the film. Nor is Lola’s friendship with one of the sheep living on the farm. A sheep that she becomes too attached to and names her Baaabra at that!

A Perfect Pairing, while cute, doesn’t stray from the romantic comedy genre beats and becomes very predictable and generic in spite of capable performances from Victoria Justice and Adam Demos. Even as we witness the two falling for each other, you just know that the moment is coming when they’ll break up and call it off. But don’t worry, this break-up isn’t for long because we all know that the happy ending is coming. Sooner rather than later, right?

DIRECTOR: Stuart McDonald
SCREENWRITERS: Elizabeth Hackett & Hilary Galanoy
CAST: Victoria Justice, Adam Demos