A Machu Picchu Proposal: Movie Review

Poorly written characters thrown together in beautiful Peru.

A Machu Picchu Proposal features some poorly written characters and a lot beautiful Peruvian landmarks and landscapes. Katie (Rhiannon Fish) is a no-nonsense, everything is planned, type of girl, a very prototypical Hallmark heroine, but here she is joined by twin brother Dan (Christopher Vieira), who is exactly the same. There are two characters whose entire personalities are that they like plans and schedules and hates impulsiveness.		2025 Directed by: Colin Theys Screenplay by: Juliana Wimbles Starring: Rhiannon Fish, Alec Santos
Dan has planned a trip to Peru to propose to his girlfriend Luciana (who I believe is from Peru, but it is unknown where she currently lives because the writers don’t care about her). Dan pressures his twin sister to join him at the last minute, she finally agrees, and has impulsively joined him in Peru to help him propose. Dan knows Katie hates spontaneity, just like he does, so why did he force it on her? Do they hate each other? Perhaps, there are a lot of characters here and very few of them actually like each other. Luciana (Michelle Rossello) has surprised Dan and Katie by inviting close family friend Carlos (Alec Santos), a fellow Peruvian currently living in the US. Both Luci and Carlos live life by just going where the wind takes them, they purposely cancel plans to be spontaneous. Carlos and Katie are also chefs, but other than that, all four of these characters are completely one-dimensional. And did I mention they don’t like each other? Luci knows Dan is a very anxious person who needs order in his life to not become overwhelmed, and she thinks it’s hilarious when she messes up his plans. It’s unclear why they even want to marry each other. Dan appears to know nothing about Luci since he has no clue how to propose to her. The entire plot is Dan and Katie coming up with proposal locations and Carlos and Luci unknowingly messing that up. Perhaps that’s supposed to be funny, but it’s not. The good news is that the movie is filmed on location in Peru, so there is a lot of nice, actual locations and photography (and a little bit of stock photography). The primary couple is Katie and Carlos who unsurprisingly hate each other for the first half of the movie. Constantly throwing them together feels so forced that it’s hard to like them. However, in the second half of the movie Carlos softens a lot and Alec Santos’ charm shines through. Eventually Katie and Carlos recognize their differences and enjoy their time together, but it’s still not a romance that wholly works. I can’t imagine that they’re still going to like each other when they leave the beauty of Peru. With poorly written characters and a lot of clunky dialogue, A Machu Picchu Proposal has to survive solely on the scenery, which is a lot to ask.