A Perfect Pairing Parent Guide

Wine importer Lola (Victoria Justice) has been working herself into the ground keeping the company’s clients happy and trying to earn a massive promotion. When her insufferable boss, Calder (Craig Horner), finally pushes her too far, Lola quits outright, and immediately starts building her own wine import business from scratch. As its only employee, she’s going to have to find some clients – and soon.

A friend in the industry gives her a tip about Vaughn Family Wines, an Australian vineyard without an American distributor. Sensing a profitable opportunity, Lola takes off to Australia to persuade CEO Hazel Vaughn (Samantha Cain) to select Lola’s fledgling company as the first American importer. Although Hazel isn’t particularly interested in trusting her product to a brand new single-employee business, she is in a tough spot: Hazel also owns and operates a sheep ranch (or station, in Australian terms), and she’s short a laborer during the busy shearing season. Under the supervision of Max (Adam Demos), Lola starts with some grunt work around the station, hoping to impress Hazel with her hard work and determination – but the longer she spends with Max, the more Lola finds other reasons to stay.

I have a number of issues with this film, but the biggest is Victoria Justice, who always acts like she’s in a Nickelodeon sitcom. That’s how she got her start in acting, and she’s never evolved past that irritating, over-the-top style. It kills everything I’ve ever seen her in. Adam Demos does counterbalance the issue somewhat with some understated Outback charm, but it’s not nearly enough to compensate for Justice’s nearly constant screentime.

Parents will be relieved that the TV-14 rating Netflix puts on the film is solely for substance use – the protagonist is in the wine business, after all. There’s also a remarkably lighthearted bar fight, seemingly just to tick another Australian stereotype off the checklist. Despite that, Australia is the best part of the film, but you could get the same stunning nature shots in any number of documentaries or travel ads without suffering through nearly two hours of schlocky writing and cheap acting.

A thoroughly bland and generic rom-com, A Perfect Pairing might pair best with a pint of ice cream and your sweatpants – any attempt at mixing more serious viewing with this uninspired, regurgitated story could provoke some kind of allergic reaction. Even that would prove more interesting than the reverse version of Crocodile Dundee parading across the screen.