Love is in the Air marks Delta Goodrem’s first film role since the 2005 high school dramedy Hating Alison Ashley, in which she plays a Sandy Olsson-esque student with holier-than-thou vibes. Goodrem is more salt of the earth and more bloody Strayan as a seaplane pilot in Netflix’s very corny and saccharine romance: a galumphing heffalump of a movie that is best – and perhaps only – enjoyed by devotees of the Sydney-born performer. Most audiences will emerge from this formulaic and hammily acted production feeling like they’ve inhaled a block of cheese the size of a car battery.
Goodrem’s chirpy character Dana has Santa Claus-ish vibes, whizzing around communities off the coast of far-north Queensland to deliver parcels to people in need. I didn’t believe she was a pilot any more than I believe a plump man in a red suit squeezes through chimneys every December. But the protagonist isn’t the only implausible thing about this film: everything and everyone in it feels so very fake and contrived, as if beaming in from a bizarro synthetic world of simulated human emotions and Hallmark sentiment.
