📸: Hallmark Gold Crown
I give this movie 8 out of 10 vomits
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
🟢 Plot 🟢
A booking mix-up turns Samara’s birthday getaway into a week-long journey where she and her friends rediscover their passions, their purpose and romance.
🟢 The Stars 🟢
Tamera Mowry-Housley – Samara
Brad James – Dr. Kareem
🟢 Non Spoiler Spew 🟢
What a great feel good movie! This makes you want to look inward and to make sure that you are confident in who you are.
Ok, this plot was great, but it totally messed up with adding the romance. This movie DID NOT need that at all. It should have just stuck to finding your inner woman and finding your true self. At first I did think it was going to be boring, but I ended up enjoying it. I slowed down and took the time to listen to its message. And I will for sure take them to heart.
There was ZERO chemistry between Tamera and Brad. Ok, between the two actors there was a good chemistry, but the characters together made no sense to me. We saw them together like 3 times, and the story did not even focus on them being a couple. It was just really rushed. It felt like Hallmark threw it in there because they are known for romances. But the thing is that the movie would have been perfectly fine without the romance.
The true chemistry was between Tamera, Lyndie Greenwood, and Krystal Joy Brown. I could see them being friends in real life. You can see all three ladies were really enjoying their time together filming. I am sure they had a great time with each other off screen as well. With all the Hallmark movies I have seen, this cast is one of the few that looked completely comfortable with each other. These ladies were funny together as well. Lyndie and Krystal were my favorite though.
Like I said in the beginning, this is a great feel good movie. It will definitely make you rethink what you are doing with your life. it also really makes you look inward to make sure that you are connected with your true self.
🔴 Plot Summary Spoiler Spew 🔴
Renee and Eva are planning a birthday trip for their best friend Samara. Renee asks her assistant to book 3 tickets to the Wilding Out Retreat. Samara is reluctant because she is up for a finance director promotion. She says yes in the end because they all need a week to just party and have fun. We see that the assistant books 3 to the Rewilding Out Retreat. Wilding Out is a private island full of partying and the Rewilding is a spiritual retreat to connect yourself to the woman you are. Renee is really getting in to the retreat, Eva is giving it a try, and Samara is against it. Samara wants out of this retreat.
I really don’t know why Renee would trust her assistant for this. Well, the assistant is actually the lead hair stylist at Renee’s salon and she has proven herself to be pretty unreliable. Since this was an obvious character trait, I don’t know why the writers wrote that in there. Pretty flimsy plot point.
During one of the sessions, the ladies are told to go back to their quarters and find something of theirs that reminds them of the person they intended to be. Eva gets her “mom robe” that has tears in it and a jelly stain, but deep down she does want to go back to work. Renee has her curling iron to represent her hair salon. Samara surprisingly finds her paint brushes that were in her suitcase. With their items they have to decide weather or not to bless their items, burn them, or to bestow their gifts to someone.
On Samara’s birthday, Renee surprises her with taking her and Eva on the little island bus that drove them to the retreat. Joy, the owner’s niece, helped Renee to get the keys to the bus. They take the bus to a nearby town. The run into Kareem in the town and he invites them all to a birthday dinner he was going to cook for Samara. Eva and Renee quickly ditch Samara, leaving her alone with Kareem to make him drive her back to the retreat.
How the heck did Renee know how to close the bus doors? She just got up in there and closed the doors quickly. At least take your time and pretend that you weren’t showed which button to press. This is really bothering more than it should 😅
At the birthday dinner, Samara tells Eva that she wants to create a card collection for black family reunions. With Eva helping Samara name the line “Soulful Summers”, Samara gives her the idea of becoming a consultant. Renee used Kareem’s bathroom and she found women hair in his hairbrush. Renee takes the hair in a napkin to show Eva.
I absolutely LOVE that Renee took the hair and put it in a napkin as proof. She was not going to take any chances, she was like my friends are going to believe me. I really did love that part. More women should be getting proof because we all know that some women wont believe you without proof.
Renee, Eva, and Samara have a falling out because they spoke to each other about the flaws they see in everyone.
Samara confronts Kareem about it and he takes her back to his place. She sees Joy there and finds out that is his daughter. He wants Samara to tell Joy that doing art is not everything and that Joy needs to give up her full ride scholarship to an art institute and focus on her family. Samara tells Kareem that he is wrong and that she would have loved to have done her artwork, but that was not in the cards for her.
Back home Renee and Eva make up. At Samara’s interview she gave her take on what she thinks the finance director should take, but her boss tells her that this role is pretty straight forward and they want the person to do exactly what the job description says. Samara ends up not getting the job. Luckily in the end, her boss tells her that she will help her get on the illustration team.
After a month Samara goes back to the island to see Kareem. He tells her that he let Joy go to her art college. He was moved by Joy and her that he decided to buy a local café because cooking has been his passion all along. Kareem and Samara kiss.
Towards the end I really do feel like they rushed everything. And you know, I actually don’t get what Samara was pitching to her boss. I thought I did, but what I thought did not look like what she discussed. Anyway, I do like where everyone ended up. I like that they all took the retreat to heart and followed their passions.
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