Add Decider on Google Where to Stream: The Last Sunrise Powered by Reelgood More On: romance Where Was ‘The Last Sunrise’ Filmed? Discover ‘The Last Sunrise’ Filming Locations in Mallorca When Does ‘The Last Sunrise’ Movie Come Out on Prime Video? Release Date, Release Time, and Streaming Info Stream It Or Skip It: ‘S&X’ On Netflix, In Which A Compassionate Sex Therapist Treats Intimate Issues While Navigating His Own Trauma The ‘Girls Like Girls’ Kiss Scene Is the Passionate Make-Out Sesh Young Lesbians Deserve to See on Screen The romance content industry slogs grinds out another widget with The Last Sunrise (now on Prime Video), a bronze-bodies-in-a-beautiful-locale time-waster with ties to a medium-prominent kissyface franchise. Namely, the Afters, a book-series-turned-movie-series created by author Anna Todd, whose standalone novel The Last Sunrise gets a similar adaptation. Carlson Young (Upgraded) directs, with Maia Reficco (La Dolce Villa) and relative newcomer Fernando Lindez as the young, hot leads, getting support from former Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria. But do the names matter when the plot and characters are so depressingly generic? Hardly.
The Gist: “My body has become my enemy,” Oriah, or Ry (Reficco), says, and thankfully, this klutzy voiceover goes away quickly and never comes back. See, Ry is a professional dancer. She collapses on stage mid-performance, suffering seizures. Her mother, Isolde (Longoria) rushes to her side. The diagnosis is epilepsy, caused by tumors that can be treated with surgery that risks permanently altering her memory, or by lots and lots of medication that makes her feel numb and listless. She opts for the latter, and her alarm goes off four times a day to remind her, lest this trip with her mother to ludicrously gorgeous Mallorca be far too distracting.
I mean, consider the charms of the place: The omnipresent sun, crystalline waters, old-world cobblestone streets, artisan shops, chiseled young fishermen emerging from the ocean hanging full dong on nude beaches, etc. The latter gives Ry quite the eyeful, and his name is Julian (Lindez). Oh boy, this boy. He chastises her for staring. Is it worth noting that she’s wearing a bathing suit and he isn’t? That she was sorta tricked by her new friend Amara (Chloe Sweetlove) into going to a clothing-optional spot? I dunno, maybe, doesn’t matter, because the hormones are flowing and engorgement is nigh, my friends. Nigh.
But as the guy said, if only ’twere so simple. Ry and Julian hit it off like the two most attractive people in movies like this always do, but there’s always a hitch in movies like this. See, Isolde heads a hotel conglomerate angling to build a resort in Mallorca, specifically on the property owned by Julian’s humble family of fisherfolk. Right: Oh jeez. As Julian shows her the sights around Mallorca and inside his pants, Ry keeps that bit of info under her hat, along with the truth of her medical condition. But Julian has his own secret. He’s in debt to some local hooligans who aren’t afraid to rough him up, thus explaining his family’s need to sell their precious docks. Meanwhile, Ry stops taking her medication so she can feel all the things that Julian makes her feel, and so this limp plot can gin up a little drama in the third act, because no bad movie can exist without a totally avoidable conflict.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Unfortunately, The Last Sunrise meanders closer to Coleen Hoover crud (e.g., Regretting You) than its unenthusiastic attempts to be a pseudo-update of Under the Tuscan Sun.
Performance Worth Watching: The screenplay gives the cast very little inspiration to do anything memorable. I guess Sweetlove stands out as a bubbly presence functioning as a little light comic relief.
Sex And Skin: The Last Sunrise is one of those movies where it seems like there’s more nudity than there actually is, thanks to editing and camera tricks. A couple of medium-wattage sex scenes and the sequence on the nude beach offer a gluteus or three and lots of skin but nothing to inspire more than the softest R rating.
Our Take: The Last Sunrise is as just-add-water as rom-drams can be. Typical for this type of almost-naughty fantasy with simplistic YA overtones, the protagonist is barely a character. Ry tends to loiter vacuously as things happen to her, whether she stares blankly at the scenery or finds herself in need of rescue by hunkster Julian after a creep starts groping her. That Julian literally grabs her and physically carries her away from the situation is a one-to-one representation of how she’s little more than a passive participant in the plot, illustrating how she’s nothing more than a pretty face with very little agency in her own story.
The lack of a strong protagonist is a major problem, because by the time we reach the watery melodrama of the third act, we don’t feel particularly invested in who she is, what she wants and the direction of her life. In fact, I’m not convinced she knows who she is, what she wants or what direction she’d like her life to take. Young’s bright, crisp, digital, soulless, depthless visual approach to the story — wholly characteristic of ambitionless direct-to-streaming romances — offers us some overpriced-gift-shop postcards to look at while the story plays out with predictable inevitability and concludes with the sub-anticlimactic heft of a hummingbird fart. This is a dull romance between two cold fish in a very warm place.
Our Call: If I were Mallorca, I’d be offended by the movie’s implication that I can’t inspire these two incredibly sexy people to generate some real heat. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
