Starring Cindy Busby and Benjamin Hollingsworth
***SPOILER ALERT***
Nervous Maya (Busby) of NYC is representing her branch of Vesta Technologies at a corporate retreat in the Colorado Mountains. She’ll compete in a variety of wilderness challenges, including whitewater rafting, to prove to her boss, Marilyn (Heather Doerksen), that she’s worthy of being promoted to an executive position. At the retreat, Maya meets laid-back California dude Matt (Hollingsworth), one of three other Vesta employees being considered for the promotion. Under the direction of the company’s CEO, Allegra (Kate Twa), the four compete. But soon Allegra pairs Maya and Matt against the other employees, and as romance blossoms they realize they make a good team.
PROS
Beautiful British Columbia. The movie was filmed in Squamish and Burnaby, and the lush landscape was nothing short of breathtaking.
CONS
A silly script by Juliana Wimbles and grating performance by Cindy Busby made this movie hard to watch.
A dumb premise. I can understand sending employees to a wilderness retreat as a fun and relaxing reward for their hard work (or possibly for a learning experience). Presumably, they could choose their own activities and wouldn’t be forced into anything they didn’t want to do. But in A Whitewater Romance, the employees were invited expressly to compete with one another in a series of difficult physical tasks, and they had little choice but to do as they were told. This was bad enough, but here’s the kicker: their abilities in the great outdoors were supposed to reflect their competence in their office jobs. The person who got promoted would be chosen primarily on the basis of their wilderness skills. As if paddling a raft has anything to do with developing an app! Simply put, this was illogical. I couldn’t get behind this ridiculous premise.
Busby and her dumb character. Busby overacted, mugging for the camera. She was panicky and shrill every time her character, Maya, felt out of her depth. Busby overshadowed her fellow actors, including subdued co-star Hollingsworth, last seen as a caring pastor in An Easter Bloom (2024), and the two leads had zilch in the way of romantic chemistry. It irritated me that Busby’s character was such a dumb, helpless female. Yes, Maya was from the big city and had never pitched a tent before, but her incompetence was extreme. This was a woman who thought perfume was an effective substitute for bear spray. She was also dopey enough to go along with Marilyn’s sneaky scheme to sabotage the competition, and predictably, Matt discovered her unflattering notes about him and the others. And because Maya often got hysterical, Matt frequently needed to come to her rescue. Near the end of the movie, he waded out to get her after she leaped out of a raft just a few feet from shore. She wasn’t exactly drowning. This damsel-in-distress routine was tedious. Busby’s cartoonish performance as ditzy Maya sandpapered my nerves. Maya (and Matt) did come up with a good idea—live streaming their whitewater rafting trip to give the lodge more exposure. Maya wouldn’t acknowledge Matt’s contribution to this at first, however. And why the live stream excited Allegra enough to send them to partner at the Paris office, I didn’t know.
Dumb activities. Some of the activities came across as idiotic/pointless. The first was cat and mouse, a juvenile game in which employees had to capture ribbons from other competitors. There were also silly exercises like random words of kindness (which wasn’t random, since participants were obligated to say nice things about another person). But by far the most inane activity involved eggs. Competitors were told to run through the woods with an egg on a spoon, then shoot the egg from a slingshot at a target. I don’t know about you, but the sheer wastefulness of all those splattered eggs appalled me. They would have attracted bears to the campsite too. And did you notice that the owner of the lodge, Jim (William deVry), sent Maya and Matt out to gather wild mushrooms for dinner? This was irresponsible. Would they even know which ones were poisonous? Some of the other tasks looked stupidly dangerous, including walking blindfolded across a rickety bridge with lots of gaps in it while holding onto a rope. No thank you. All these activities seemed designed to fill up a movie suffering from a flimsy plot.
What do these people do for a living? I was never clear about what Maya, Matt, or the others did at Vesta Technologies. The company was somehow involved with apps, but I couldn’t tell what role each person played. Product development? PR? Advertising? Usually the nature of people’s occupations is much clearer in Hallmark movies. A lot of tech jargon got thrown around, and maybe it was just me, but this language was confusing.
My grade for A Whitewater Romance: F
Caroline Kaiser is a professional book editor who specializes in fiction and memoirs, and she’s been guiding writers toward publication since 2007. Caroline is also the author of two ghostly mystery novels, Virginia’s Ghost and The Spirits of South Drive. Before she embarked on an editing and writing career, she spent many years working in a Toronto auction house as an antiques appraiser. Apart from curling up on the couch and drinking tea as she watches Hallmark movies, Caroline enjoys baking and exploring London, Ontario, the picturesque city she now calls home. Her website is www.carolinekaisereditor.com.
