If you can’t travel the globe, the Hallmark Channel’s Passport to Love series offers virtual escapes by filming in stunning cities worldwide. This week’s feature, A Machu Picchu Proposal, delivers a delightful, humorous, and somewhat absurd romantic tale about Katie. She travels to Peru to assist her twin brother with his picturesque marriage proposal, but chaos ensues at every turn. Despite their efforts to orchestrate the ideal moment, unexpected chemistry blooms between Katie and Carlos, a chef she encounters during her stay.
Opening Scene: A woman stands at a counter, sampling dishes from several pots. She manages a cooking school and is testing recipes for upcoming classes.
Main Plot: Katie (Rhiannon Fish) initially plans to spend her summer prepping for the cooking course she’ll lead in the fall. However, her twin brother Dan (Christopher Vieira) lures her to Peru for a visit with him and his girlfriend Luciana (Michelle Rosello), whom he intends to propose to. Both Katie and Dan are meticulous planners, devoted to their spreadsheets, so he enlists her expertise to craft the perfect proposal at Machu Picchu.
When they arrive to Cusco, Dan’s girlfriend Luciana introduces them to her friend Carlos (Alec Santos), a chef. Almost as soon as they arrive, Carlos tells them he’s arranged for them to take a VIP guided tour of Machu Picchu, the beautiful, ancient Incan city in the mountains. Under any other circumstances, this would be great but Dan had planned for his proposal to take place in Machu Picchu in a few days, and this is going to throw off his entire plan and the whole trip. Dan is hilariously awkward, almost devolving into Mr. Bean levels of discomfort and weird behavior, a combination of altitude sickness and his allergy to spontaneity, so he starts to spiral about when he’ll another chance to propose.
Dan asks Katie to head out on an excursion with Carlos to scout out some other beautiful locations in Peru where Dan might be able to create the most perfect proposal of all time. Carlos doesn’t realize the purpose of the trip, because Dan is trying to keep the proposal a surprise, and Katie explains that she’s trying to help him discover new ingredients he can use in his cooking. At every turn, some problem arises: Dan has a reaction to some especially “fibrous” alpaca milk he chugs, the ring falls in a vat of melted chocolate and gets turned into dessert. You know, typical stuff. Eventually, Carlos catches on that Katie is trying to plan something for Dan and Luciana, and it endears him to her.
Katie and Dan have a huge argument when he learns that Carlos knows about the surprise, but the temporary rift is mended when Katie borrows some of Carlos’s chill vibes and helps come up with the perfect proposal after all, winning over Carlos in the process.
Our Take: Katie and Dan are twins who think alike – they’re both nerdy to the Nth degree, and prefer to live structured lives. The fact that Katie accepted Dan’s spontaneous invitation to Peru in the first place seems out of character. Katie’s rigidity is the perfect foil to Carlos, whose preferred method of travel is flying by the seat of his pants. When Katie says stuff like, “This isn’t part of the plan,” he says chill stuff like, “It’s the journey, not the destination.” It would be infuriating in real life, but here, Santos plays Carlos so casual and breezy, it’s just fun to watch. But a romantic spark also takes quite a while to get to, the romantic leads are both charming but the romance feels more understated than what we, uh, Hallmaniacs are used to. (Is there an actual, better term for Hallmark fans?)
The movie is more fun and interesting when it leans into Katie and Dan’s madcap adventure, trying to come up with the best proposal possible. If the romantic aspect of the film was simply that – Dan’s quest to create a magical moment for Luciana – the movie could have been just as successful, honestly. But that’s the thing about Hallmark movies, to keep from being formulaic, sometimes when they lean into aspects beyond the traditional love story, they succeed in other ways and are that much more satisfying as a result.
Parting Shot: At a party celebrating Dan and Lucy’s proposal, Carlos asks Katie, “Will you dance with me?” to which she responds, “Yes, chef.”
Performance Worth Watching: The brother-sister chemistry isn’t usually the dynamic that steals the show in a rom-com, but Fish and Vieira are a great comic team, heightening each other’s nerdiness and anxious traits.
Memorable Dialogue: “I don’t like messing with an itinerary,” Katie tells Carlos when he asks her to be spontaneous and go for a hike. This response is a hilarious way to tell someone your boundaries.
Our Call: A Machu Picchu Proposal is an above-average offering from Hallmark; while the romance doesn’t hit you over the head, it’s filled with genuinely funny moments and unique characters that are delightfully weird, all set amid a truly gorgeous setting. 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.
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=823934954307605&version=v2.8”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
