Gabriele Muccino's film is disturbingly uneven. It opens with a downwards shot of Roman teenager Brando Pacitto (chiefly notable for playing Jesus on TV) stretched out on the grass, possibly deliberately invoking BOYHOOD, and his English language narration injects our old friend alienation. "Days with my friends were all the same."
He completes his finals but is involved in a traffic accent which leaves him battered but the recipient of a compensation check and his pot smoking vulcanologist chum Guglielmo Poggi urges him to take a holiday in the 'States.
Somehow he finds Matilda Lutz, the girl nobody likes at their school coming along too. They call her "the Nun" because she won't drink, have sex or do dope with them. So far so so.
The pair arrive in San Francisco where accommodation has been set up in a flat occupied by gay couple Taylor Frey and Joseph Haro. She thinks of them as degenerates. Well we know where this is going. Sure enough it becomes a plea for understanding and tolerance. This might be new and needful to some audiences but hardly for people who will turn out for a Muccino film with sub-titles.
However something exceptional does happen. Going around together in San Francisco, to which the boys arrived in the same way our travelers did, from a conservative background, we get Frey's back story which is presented as being sensational. The newcomers lose their restraint.
The boys' dog sleeping in his bed drives Pacitto into sharing with Lutz'. She finds herself getting about (somewhat nervously) in an itsy bitsy bikini and they hit the gay clubs together. The film becomes one of Muccino's lyrical hymns to the group. The stop over stretches and they all go off on a trip to Cuba together (this one is into international flights) which convinces us that they are sharing an experience that they all will cherish all their lives.
This section is totally winning and it's a pity that the film can't do anything with the impetus it produces. Having the piece narrated by Pacitto, it's least interesting character, doesn't help either. Matilda Lutz' transformation is truly awesome and we can only hope she gets to do that in a few more movies while Haro and particularly Frey, along with the travel footage, come across appealingly.
It seems that this one is already in there with BIX and JIMMY P. as failed European attempts to crash the English language market. At least they are all better than Rossellini's Ingrid Bergman films. I guess that's some kind of progress.
He completes his finals but is involved in a traffic accent which leaves him battered but the recipient of a compensation check and his pot smoking vulcanologist chum Guglielmo Poggi urges him to take a holiday in the 'States.
Somehow he finds Matilda Lutz, the girl nobody likes at their school coming along too. They call her "the Nun" because she won't drink, have sex or do dope with them. So far so so.
The pair arrive in San Francisco where accommodation has been set up in a flat occupied by gay couple Taylor Frey and Joseph Haro. She thinks of them as degenerates. Well we know where this is going. Sure enough it becomes a plea for understanding and tolerance. This might be new and needful to some audiences but hardly for people who will turn out for a Muccino film with sub-titles.
However something exceptional does happen. Going around together in San Francisco, to which the boys arrived in the same way our travelers did, from a conservative background, we get Frey's back story which is presented as being sensational. The newcomers lose their restraint.
The boys' dog sleeping in his bed drives Pacitto into sharing with Lutz'. She finds herself getting about (somewhat nervously) in an itsy bitsy bikini and they hit the gay clubs together. The film becomes one of Muccino's lyrical hymns to the group. The stop over stretches and they all go off on a trip to Cuba together (this one is into international flights) which convinces us that they are sharing an experience that they all will cherish all their lives.
This section is totally winning and it's a pity that the film can't do anything with the impetus it produces. Having the piece narrated by Pacitto, it's least interesting character, doesn't help either. Matilda Lutz' transformation is truly awesome and we can only hope she gets to do that in a few more movies while Haro and particularly Frey, along with the travel footage, come across appealingly.
It seems that this one is already in there with BIX and JIMMY P. as failed European attempts to crash the English language market. At least they are all better than Rossellini's Ingrid Bergman films. I guess that's some kind of progress.