‘The Map That Leads To You’ Movie Review: Madelyn Cline Is The Real Deal In Whirlwind European Romance
Photo from Amazon MGM Studios
From Jeremy Kibler
Pretty people falling in love in pretty places will always be its own kind of romantic sub-genre. One would be forgiven for thinking The Map That Leads To You is one of the last remaining Nicholas Sparks adaptations, but it’s actually based on J.P. Monninger’s 2017 book of the same name. It has a lot of the same ingredients as such, including director Lasse Hallström (Dear John, Safe Haven) and a pair of photogenic leads. Thankfully holding the weepy melodrama at bay, this is an inviting, winsome, and bittersweet romance with passports.
Madelyn Cline and KJ Apa are gorgeous and have lovely chemistry together as traveling strangers Heather and Jack. Before making the move to New York for a boring banking job, the Texas-raised Heather puts her two best friends, Connie (Sofia Wylie) and Amy (Madison Thompson), on a tight itinerary for their European trip. On the train to Barcelona, she flirts with Jack, a New Zealand backpacker who uses his great-grandfather’s journal as a map of every site he wants to visit. They end up running into each other again, only to spend the whole night together in a cable car. There’s something Jack isn’t telling Heather, but what if Heather takes a risk outside of her plan and decides not to go back to New York just yet?
The Map That Leads To You does something simple that’s not always easily achieved: it gives us characters we can understand and care about. Both characters are distinctly drawn: Heather always has a plan and needs a plan, while Jack is more spontaneous and flies by the seat of his pants. The first hour is a well-developed whirlwind romance of them walking and talking, establishing Heather and Jack’s relationship that feels like a transformative love and not just one that ends after the vacation.
The script by Les Bohem and Vera Herbert withholds information from the audience and from Heather. It’s not hard to guess what that information could be, and when Heather and Jack get to the airport, viewers will either go with the heartache that comes next or be done with it. While this one plot gimmick is generally formulaic (and kind of glossed over once revealed in a journal), it still somehow doesn’t come across as a cheap ploy in emotional manipulation.
Deserving of any project that comes her way, Madelyn Cline (I Know What You Did Last Summer) is so appealing here. As Heather, she’s naturally charismatic but also self-assured and independent, to the point that she will put Jack in his place. Cline even sells a little moment where Heather is given a guitar in front of Jack and some family friends; it’s an acoustic performance of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” that’s joyous and authentic. KJ Apa (A Dog’s Purpose) is both charming and mysterious as Jack, although how he fails to communicate vital information to Heather could potentially be read as selfish. Sofia Wylie and Madison Thompson likably round out Heather’s support system as ride-or-die best friends Connie and Amy, and Josh Lucas also has a few nice moments as Heather’s sounding board of a single dad.
Par for the course, director Lasse Hallström makes sunny, chicken-soup-for-everyone’s-soul movies. At first, before the story deepens with its matters of the heart, the film begins as a travelogue crossed with a Hollister ad. Elías M. Félix’s cinematography certainly has on-location shooting on its side, but it’s shot as attractively as a live travel guide for Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and cities in Portugal, Italy, and Spain.
In lesser hands, The Map That Leads To You could have remained superficial and become extremely cloying. But for audiences who want this sort of thing, it feels more achingly gentle and alive than most.
Rating: 3.5/5
The Map That Leads To You is available to stream on Prime Video on August 20, 2025.
