‘You, Me & Tuscany’ Review

As an increasingly rare romantic comedy to break free from straight-to-streaming jail and secure a wide theatrical release, ‘You, Me & Tuscany’ is the exact kind of film I’d love to be able to celebrate in the hope that more such original stories return to theaters. Unfortunately, this ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ riff is a generic disappointment with as much insight into romance and Italian culture as a cute postcard or, perhaps more fittingly, an Instagram post of a particularly photogenic plate of pasta.

Anna (Halle Bailey) is a house sitter from New York who gets fired from her job after the homeowner comes home early and finds Anna acting like she owns the place. After visiting her best friend at her job in a luxury hotel, Anna meets a charming Italian man, Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor). The two hit it off during a night of drinking, and Matteo shares that he owns a beautiful, vacant villa in Tuscany that he seldom visits due to an estrangement with his family. Anna was always planning to visit Tuscany with her mother, but after her mother’s passing she put off all of her life plans.

Now, out of a job and open to adventure, Anna decides to fly to Tuscany and stay in this villa. When Matteo’s family finds her and assumes she is marrying their son, Anna goes along with it even as she begins to develop feelings for the family’s other, adopted son Michael (Regé-Jean Page). Typical American abroad hijinks ensue as these two expatriates speed run an enemies to lovers plot.

The defining adjective for much of Kat Coiro’s filmmaking choices is lazy, perhaps best exemplified by a “romantic” montage sequence in which Bailey and Page begin to have feelings for one another at a single table, sharing glasses of wine. There is no dialogue, just music playing over recurring shots of them laughing together, as if nobody could think of a believable way that these two would actually bond in so short a time. By keeping a pivotal moment all in a single location, the scene, and much of the film, is visually uninteresting but hey, I’m sure they saved on production costs.

The storytelling laziness extends to the writing, as character feelings and backstories are constantly voiced aloud and repeated in a way that feels like this movie was designed for a streamer, where people can do anything else while this plays pleasantly in the background. The beginning of the movie contains that most hackneyed storytelling device: a freeze frame that leads into a “you’re probably wondering how I got here” voiceover explaining Anna’s recent past. This is bad enough as is, but then moments later Anna repeats all of this information to a stranger she meets in the bar.

Some moments in the film provoked laughter, but perhaps that wasn’t the intention. Anna had gone to culinary school, and the story sets up an arc of her rediscovering her passion for cooking. And yet the moment when Matteo’s family realizes her cooking potential occurs in the family kitchen, when Anna exhibits the refined culinary skill of removing a piece of meat from a pan with tongs, causing the family patriarch to freeze and proclaim that she must be a cook. I’d probably be able to convince this guy I’m Gordon Ramsay, so long as he doesn’t try the food.

Halle Bailey is a triple threat of blandness, equally uninteresting in the drama, the romance, and the comedy. Regé-Jean Page fares slightly better, able to deliver charm with ease, but they both struggle with underdeveloped characters whose seemingly only common traits are dead parents and a love for food and wine.

In its happiness-by-numbers plot beats and flights of tourism fantasy, where everybody is welcoming and nothing goes wrong, ‘You, Me & Tuscany’ is ultimately a superficial but inoffensive genre film destined, sadly, for a successful run at a streaming service near you.

You, Me & Tuscany
Rated PG-13 for some strong language, and sexual material.
Running Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes

Director Kat Coiro
Writers Ryan Engle
Stars Halle Bailey, Regé-Jean Page, Marco Calvani, Aziza Scott
Rating PG-13
Running Time 105 Minutes
Genres Comedy, Romance