You, Me & Tuscany: A Review

YOU, ME & TUSCANY

Contrary to popular belief, I am not a harsh critic. I judge a film based on what it is aiming for. As such, I found You, Me & Tuscany to be totally and completely serviceable. It is not original or particularly well-acted. However, the film has pleasant, affable (and beautiful looking) leads and is a nice hodgepodge of past romcoms to make it a nice little date movie.

Briana Celeste Montgomery, better known as Anna (Halle Bailey), once aspired to be a renowned chef. She had been a top culinary school student when she dropped out after her beloved mother's death. Now, Anna is floating about life and getting herself into jams due to attempting to pass herself off as the actual owner of places she is merely housesitting at. Anna looks to her friend Claire (Aziza Scott) for help in finding food and shelter. Claire offers her a discount at the restaurant hotel where she works at. Anna also finds Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), a nice Italian guy who takes a shine to her. He's into real estate and not the family vineyard business back in Italy.

They share some good food, good feelings, but no cavorting. Impulsively, Anna jets off to Tuscany inspired by Matteo's suggestion that she live her life rather than try and imitate other peoples. Unfortunately, she chose the wrong time to come, as a major festival leaves her without lodging. That is, until she remembers Matteo's empty villa. Desperate, she crashes the villa. Things look alright until she finds an engagement ring in a junk drawer and Matteo's mother and grandmother find Anna in the villa. Comedic hijinks (and lies) lead them to think Anna is Matteo's fiancée.

Now, the boisterous Italian family (and a highly suspicious Grandmama) welcome Anna into the fold. They also hope that Anna will help bring Matteo back home after a falling out. What Anna had not counted on was Matteo's cousin/adopted brother Michael (Regé-Jean Page). They did not hit it off, but in the ways of the world, they soon start finding themselves drawn to each other. Things, already complicated owing to Anna and Michael's growing attraction, grow more complicated when Matteo himself arrives. There is a sibling rivalry between them. There is also guilt from Matteo about his fraught relationship. Who will end up with Anna's heart among the beautiful Tuscan landscape? 

I found You, Me & Tuscany unoriginal. It was a curious blend of other films. It was a bit like The Princess and the Frog minus the voodoo. It was a great deal like While You Were Sleeping minus the head injury. You even had a dash of A Walk in the Clouds and Bridget Jones' Diary within this film. I did not see Under the Tuscan Sun, but I figure You, Me & Tuscany also draws from that romcom too. As I said, I found You, Me & Tuscany unoriginal. That does not mean that I found You, Me & Tuscany awful. 

Instead, I found the film to be harmless, predictable, frothy and sweet. Ryan Engle's screenplay (from a story by Engle and Kristin N. Engle) know that You, Me & Tuscany is essentially cinematic candy. It is not deep. It is not witty. It is, however, simple and built on eccentric situations and cliches. If you watch the film with the mindset that it is just well-meaning, slightly silly romantic comedy goofiness, you will not be disappointed. 

This is the type of film where essentially everyone is in on the joke. Director Kat Coiro features lush Italian vistas, broad performances from the cast and Regé-Jean Page's exceptional torso. No one in You, Me & Tuscany gives what I would call a "great performance". Each performance, rather, is good or bad ranging on how broad to somewhat less broad the character was. Each of the Italian family members were inoffensive if not a bit exaggerated. Stella Pecollo as the loud, bombastic but loving Aunt Francesca and Tomasso Cassissa as the Instagram-obsessed Cousin Enzo were pleasant in their manner. Isabella Ferrari's Mother Gabriella is the closest to lending drama to something as frothy as You, Me & Tuscany. She wants Matteo to return and reconcile with the family. That is about the most drama the film has.

Our two leads work well together. It is nice to see a romantic comedy where both the male and female leads are black and even nicer that such a detail is unimportant. The closest the film comes to acknowledging that detail is in a bit of dialogue between Anna and Michael. Noting their similarities when they first meet-angry, Anna starts by saying, "We're the only two people here..." at which point Michael answers, "Who speak English". It helps that Page speaks it with a beautiful British accent.

No one questions Anna being engaged to Matteo. Michael's family connection to Matteo is explained easily. He's the son of Gabriella's sister and an Englishman who died when Michael was young. Gabriella and her husband later adopted him as a son. Therefore, he is both their son and nephew. I would not call the casting a cinematic breakthrough. I would call it a good example of how diversity can be both an asset and irrelevant to the plot itself. 

Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page work well together. They have a nice chemistry, and both play their parts well given the thinness of the premise. I would say that Page did better as Michael came across as pleasant and sensible. He also had the obligatory shirtless scene where one can enjoy how fit he is. Bailey was a bit more exaggerated as Anna, the constant efforts to keep up the rouse playing a bit broad. That, however, is the character and scenario, so I cannot fault her for being broad when she is in a farce. To her credit, she does have good moments when she talks about her late mother and their dreams to go to Italy when she graduated from culinary school.

I would argue that Aziza Scott's Claire was pushing a stereotype of a loud, cartoonish BFF. Fortunately, she was mostly heard on the telephone, so we did not have to see a lot that performance.

Everything in You, Me & Tuscany points to this being a deliberately cutesy, frothy concoction. Of particular note is John Debney's score, which felt like something I would hear in a Hallmark movie. Perhaps that is a good way to think of You, Me & Tuscany: as a Hallmark movie with a larger budget. It might not be as good as Solo Mio, another love letter to love Italian style released this year. However, overall, I found You, Me & Tuscany a pleasant, inoffensive romp. 

Either that, or it's almost impossible to have a bad romantic comedy if it is set in Italia. 

DECISION: C+