Kira Slater (Lacey Chabert) is busy making websites from a Chicago office. She goes to South Africa to the reading of his beloved uncle's will although she hadn't seen him for a long while. To the shock of everybody, he left his safari reserve to her even though she hadn't been there since childhood. Tom Anderson is the head ranger and Ally Botsman is a ranger. Lwazi is the manager. Kira immediately gets an offer from a cookie cutter resort corporation. Tom is desperate to keep Kira from selling and decides to make her fall in love with him. It doesn't help that she has a boyfriend back in Chicago and she only wants to go home.

The only cool thing is the location. The scheme is very high school. The romance is nothing special. I love Lacey but the guy is a dud. He's more background actor than leading man. There is no heat and it fails in all the rom-com tropes. I don't understand the advantage of holding back the stepsiblings relationship. This movie is best on safari. I want the animals. I want more animals. I want the actors with the animals although they don't get much interactions. It's great to see the safari although it's not the level of a modern nature film. The romance isn't much. This is location, location, location.

There were two main reasons in watching 'Love on Safari'. One being South Africa, one of those seen many times yet never gets old places. The other being Lacey Chabert, one of Hallmark's most popular regular leading ladies for very good reason. Have also for a few years now been watching Hallmark films fairly regularly, starting with just the Christmas output and then adding on the other seasonal blocks last year. It's been an interesting and worthwhile, if very uneven quest that has seen some good finds as well as some trash.

'Love on Safari' is not one of the Hallmark films that fall in the trash category, which just to say is actually a very, very small group. It's also not one of the good finds, Hallmark did some good films in 2018 but 'Love on Safari' is not one of them. If anything it's in the weaker half. The Summer Nights films from 2018 varied in quality and if there was an award for the worst film from the 2018 Summer Nights batch, 'Love on Safari' is a strong contender for the weakest. It gets my personal vote as that.

It's not all bad by all means. The best thing about it is the production values, with South Africa looking absolutely stunning and the photographer seemed to think so with how it's filmed. It's actually one of the best looking Hallmark films from the year, which is why it is sad that the film itself overall was the opposite.

Another major strength is Chabert, the role is samey but she does bring a lot of perky charm and feeling to her role with no soap operatics or walking it. Brittany Bristow gives a lot of energy to her role and to me she didn't try too hard, if she did come over that way it was really to me because of most of the rest of the cast were slumming it in a film that felt tired in most areas. Did appreciate its good intentions with the conservation theme, a mature theme done with enough tact.

Just wish that the overall story and everything else were more interesting than transpired. Jon Cor is a stiff and charmless male lead and has no discernible chemistry with Chabert. When they were on screen together they looked cautious and disconnected and the relationship itself in the writing doesn't really go anywhere. The rest of the cast go through the motions as characters that have very little to them.

A feeling that is apparent in the story throughout also. It's a familiar formula given some of the most tired and phoned in execution of any Hallmark film seen recently. It is very, very thin and what little there is of story is very predictable and bland, but basically it felt too much like a travelogue. A beautiful looking travelogue, but a travelogue nonetheless that also was of the kind that is not that engaging. Didn't really care for any of the characters, that are basically well worn typical Hallmark cliches.

Did find the dialogue pretty awful at times and very repetitive and basic. The music is far too constant and is favoured too much over the dialogue, it is also music that isn't too great on its own either as nothing really stands out.

On the whole, very lacklustre. 4/10.

Lacey Chabert is one of the more reliable Hallmark leading ladies, and has appeared in more good than bad films for the channel (though I remember 'Pride, Prejudice and Mistletoe' not being great), but unfortunately she really comes unstuck in this dire outing.

From the very very far-fetched premise (and this is saying something for a Hallmark film) and a storyline that drags all the way through.

I thought the chemistry between her and the leading man was pretty much non-existent, with the love story element feeling very much tacked on at the end. This is a long than average Hallmark film by about three minutes, and that extra time felt like it was spent trying to cram all of the romantic set-up and conclusion, because there'd been none of this prior.

I was bored throughout, and don't think this really was the best example of Lacey Chabert's work for the channel.