Film Review: The Map That Leads To You

2 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | Sept. 6, 2025

As the summer blockbusters begin to fade like a sunset on the horizon and the multiplex screens fill up with the annual autumn horror films, I hate to admit that this critic found himself pretty bored with most of what’s playing this month on the big screens.

So with the recent cultural announcement that old-fashioned love is back, baby (thank you Taylor and Travis), I thought I’d check in on the state of contemporary romance and indulge in the new MGM/Amazon Studios streamer The Map That Leads To You. It arrived perfectly packaged with youthful hotties who fall in love unexpectedly when they cross paths in Europe.

Heather (actress Madelyn Cline) is a Texas college grad on her final vacation before corporate life begins in her first big job in New York City. She’s confident, gorgeous, and intellectual, and she plans her travel itineraries with the same care as she’s tried to plan her future life out. Cline’s performance gives the film its only partial heart and soul.

Jack (actor KJ Apa) is a mysterious Bohemian ragtagger from New Zealand with a carpe diem vibe. He’s tall, handsome, and also intellectual, and he improvises his traveling from place to place following in the footsteps of his great grandfather, who documented his WWII observations in a journal that then acts as his own Lonely Planet guide.

Heather and Jack are opposites, and that becomes the spark of their wild fling across Spain, Portugal, and Italy. And like all good unexpected love affairs, eventually it tick-tocks down until the moment the trip will end … or not?

Conveniently, Heather’s travel-mate-besties she started the journey with peel off on their own side-trip adventures, which leaves her to fulfill her wanderlust with Jack. Actresses Madison Thompson (think Diet Anna Kendrick) and Sophia Wylie (think young Pam Grier) don’t get much to work with in the script, and their characters provide little meaning other than being inserted into selfies to show us where they’ve been.

With a visual aesthetic that lazily uses Zillennial cop-outs like on-screen texts for exposition and awkward interstitials of their social media accounts intercut with live action, I can only describe the ethos as a mashup of TikTok velocity with emotional Instagram filters. It reminded me more of a vertical video soap opera than the nuances of a feature film.

That’s all the more surprising since the script was based on a lauded 2017 novel by J.P. Monniger and directed by Lasse Hallström, whose previous works include What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Chocolat, and My Life as a Dog.

This was the opposite of those nuanced classics I’m afraid: one-dimensional in depth, almost comical in logic (you have never seen an international flight board faster), forced plot twists, women with no survival instincts, and a “happiness” neither organic nor joyful despite the endless smiling, lingering close-ups, and perfect people on display. The star-crossed lovers don’t even get Bertolucci-style intimate until 46 minutes in, and by then the flames of interest had cooled for me.

Of course fantasy and romance are almost one in the same, and through our fictional love affairs we want only the finest manicured, bra-less, and shirtless eroticism so often diffused in the real world. For that reason, I wanted to fall madly for The Map That Leads To You. Instead, it left me feeling like a one-night stand.

With drugs, alcohol, excessive credit card use, petty crime, and some partial nudity, this critic fully admits others might adore this saucy, campy romp for the escapism it is. Available only through Amazon Prime Streaming and VOD and running 1 hour 36 minutes.