Under the Tuscan Sun

"1 star out of 4"

Let me first say, what I wanted to say last. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT watch this movie under any circumstances...even if you are bored out of your mind, it's not worth it. Unless you are someone who has never seen a movie before and might, MIGHT, actually enjoy this charade of cliches.

I want to take this chance to apologize to myself to putting myself through this so called movie which was an insult to my intelligence or what we call in Farsi "Sho'oor" (I couldn't find a word in English that would show what I meant"!

So you are probably now wondering what made me watch this. Well, I was bored and browsing through YouTube and nobody was nearby or kind enough (the way I was in the previous paragraph) to stop me from clicking on the link. And I sure did regret it up to this moment!

Aaah, the things that I could have done with my life in those 2 hours. Could've worked on my thesis, it sure would've been more fun, though it was what I was trying to get a break from. Could've sat down and actually listened to one of Ahmadinejad's speeches, at least it would've been really funny unlike this movie which claimed to be a romantic-comedy. Oh, believe me, as a girl, RomComs are a great part of my life and I have always liked to watch a movie from this genre, but boy was I tricked into this one.

And maybe now you are asking why I watched it till the end. Well, I was hoping at some point it would turn around and salvage me from banging my head against the wall, but it never did. And I felt responsible, since I write reviews and I want to bring the most accurate and just review to you guys. Now you see what you've done to me?! Why, God, why?!

I can't remember the last time I despised a movie this much. I think the only movie that I have ever rated lower than even this one was The Other Man. I feel sorry that such fine actors actually think that the movie is going to be great and it turns out to be rather disadtrous.

Well, where should I starts with this one? It got from a cliche, to SciFi, to downright ridiculous! At times I wasn't sure if I was watching Harry Potter or a love story in Tuscany! It had a good storytelling for a Disney cartoon, but lacked one wise line, which Disney cartoons actually have got!

You see these scenes in movies, where nothing is happening and there is no dialogue and the director is just trying to show a routine of daily life...I never thought of filming these scenes as a challenge...I mean I never thought that someone could actually mess these up...but apparently you can!

Although the food scenes are supposed to be the "eye-candies" of the movie, especially for food-fanatics like me, but even those scenes were meh! I am guessing the writer had a trip to Italy and probably watched one or two Fellini movies and was eating pasta when it occurred to him that he should write a movie about all this. I mean who wouldn't love all these things? Who wouldn't fall in love with Italy?! Or who wouldn't want to jump on a plane and go to Italy and pick up a cute Italian guy? But just appreciate it and don't try to show it through putting others into the misery of watching a boring movie.

The only upside to the script was probably the part where it showed that sometimes things don't go as you had hoped for and planned in real life, unlike how Hollywood movies usually try to show, that life if perfect. But it's not. I totally got it and liked the fact that thought had been given into this part of the movie. You buy a house, in hopes of finding a new love at a new place, but things don't turn out as glamorous as you had thought them to be in your imagination. This I think particularly is the case with day-dreamers (or all kinds of dreamers for that matter).

But this is just an upsilon of the entire movie. I blame it on the writer. As Helen Mirren said so in her Golden Globes speech (the year she got all the awards for playing all the Queen Elizabeths there were!), she thanked the writers and said that there couldn't be a good movie or TV series without good writers. And I couldn't agree more. You could have all the Scorseses and DeNiros, but without a good script, there wouldn't be a Taxi Driver or a Raging Bull.

By the way, just for once, couldn't there be one Italian guy who would actually be faithful?! Are faithful Italians myths?