Made in Italy

This movie is fairly predictable and doesn’t seem to have many bursts of originality, but I think it is a pleasant enough watch and accomplishes the modest goals it sets out for itself. It tells the story it wants to tell and allows the main characters to show some growth. I bet some reviewers who panned this movie enjoy action thrillers and can go through an entire month of watching them and not see (or wish they had seen) any character growth by the lead roles. Made in Italy is sort of like a romantic comedy without the comedy and with the romance in the background. In a rom-com, one of the two lovers has to make a grand gesture or sacrifice at the end. They don’t here, because the romance is a side story. Instead it becomes clear that either father or son will have to make a sacrifice or grand gesture before the credits run. I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch Made in Italy again, but I wouldn’t want to sit and eat the same meal with the same friends talking about the same topics again either, but I can enjoy it the first time without feeling like I have misused my time. What did I open this review with? Oh yeah, it is a pleasant enough watch. Let yourself enjoy it.

Jack Foster (Micheál Richardson) manages his ex-in-laws' art gallery until his ex-wife Ruth (Yolanda Kettle) informs him that her family is selling the gallery. Desperate for money to buy the gallery himself, Jack convinces his father Robert (Liam Neeson), a bohemian painter, to sell the Tuscan villa they inherited from their mother/wife, whose accidental death when Jack was a young child drove a wedge between father and son. After traveling from London to Italy, Robert and Jack find the house in a severe state of disrepair. We don't have to wait long for the other shoe to drop; the house and its subsequent renovation is a transparent and unoriginal metaphor for Robert and Jack's relationship. As soon – and it's very soon – as the above is made clear the film becomes predictable and its conclusion obvious, and we're left with nothing to do except enjoy the bucolic Tuscan landscapes (but a documentary on this Italian region would achieve the same effect). Another way to pass the time is wondering how Neeson and Richardson, who are father and son in real life, can have so little on-screen chemistry; then again, Richardson has no chemistry with any other character – not with his ex-wife, which actually makes sense, nor with his romantic interest Natalia (Valeria Bilello), which is inexcusable. We can also entertain ourselves spotting plot holes. 1) The house is in need of a Extreme Home Makeover; painting, carpentry, plumbing, electrical installation, etc., which requires the hiring of stereotypically colorful local workers, but no mention is ever made of where the money for all this – presumably enough to buy the gallery – is coming from. 2) Robert asks Natalia to help decorate the house, but all she ever does in that department is bring her infant daughter to help paint (an excuse to sprinkle saccharin on the plot). And 3) towards the end of the film, Jack very conveniently discovers a seemingly secret room in which Robert has "locked away [Jack's] childhood." Okay, so in all the time they've been repairing the house Jack never thought to go into this room, not even to see if it needed a coat of paint. Uh-huh. The surname Foster is likely a reference to E.M. Forster, the English novelist and author of A Room with a View, which was adapted into the 1985 film of the same name, starring Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Denholm Elliott, Maggie Smith and Daniel Day-Lewis, and which remains the best romantic comedy about Brits in the Italian countryside. In Made in Italy it's not just a room but the whole house that has a magnificent view; unfortunately, the view is the best part of the movie.