In 2022, director Kat Coiro released the Jennifer Lopez/Owen Wilson romantic comedy Marry Me, which received a mixed/leaning positive response. I decisively said yes to Marry Me, maybe it was the time of year in which it was released (in the dead of winter), or maybe I was just in the mood for it, maybe I needed something fluffy, light and optimistic. For whatever reason, I really enjoyed that film. Kat Coiro has primarily worked in television since and prior to Marry Me, but after seeing her follow-up feature, You, Me & Tuscany, it’s clear she’s quickly establishing herself as a filmmaker who could revive the flailing romantic comedy genre. 

Anna (Halle Bailey) dropped out of culinary school when her mother got sick. They had planned to go to Italy together, but it never came together. Since her mother’s death, Anna’s worked as a professional house-sitter, living vicariously through the lives of others. Once she loses her current gig, she meets the handsome and very Italian Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), who tells her about the villa he built in Tuscany that’s currently empty. 

She impulsively flies to Tuscany and ends up at the villa after being unable to find a hotel with vacancies. The next morning, Matteo’s family unexpectedly arrives, after Anna’s tried on a wedding ring she found in a drawer. Matteo’s mother (Isabella Ferrari) assumes the two are engaged, and Anna must keep the ruse going. Things are complicated once she starts to connect with Michael (Regé-Jean Page), Matteo’s charming and British relative, and sparks begin to fly.

You, Me & Tuscany is about as basic a rom-com as Marry Me, and for a lot of the same reasons it worked for me. The first being that this is something you could easily picture on the Hallmark Channel, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s blissful escapism in a time we really need it. It’s a cozy, sweet, unapologetically earnest and almost sickeningly sweet confection that wears its heart on its sleeve. The other big reason this film worked is because it leans heavily into the tradition of all our favorite travelogue romantic comedies – we get mentions of Under the Tuscan Sun and Eat Pray Love. When I’m deciding if a film worked or didn’t work, I always ask myself what the film is trying to do, and how close does it come to achieving that. You, Me & Tuscany wants to end up on a shelf next to the movies it name drops, and I think it easily achieves that.

Halle Bailey proved she’s an utter delight in one of Disney’s better live action remakes, 2023’s The Little Mermaid. We haven’t seen her very much since then, but her performance here is proof she belongs squarely in the romantic comedy genre. She’s absolutely lovely here, and there’s a lightness and an easy charm to her presence, which is intensified when she’s onscreen with Regé-Jean Page. Since his breakout role in the first season of Bridgerton, Page has also struggled to find his place in Hollywood. His role is not a complex one, he’s the leading man in a rom-com, which to be fair isn’t far from what he did in Bridgerton. But he’s still got talent and charisma for days, and even if his accent is doing a lot of the work, I never got bored watching him.

If you look at the credits of Italian actress Isabella Ferrari, it’s clear how ridiculously overqualified she is for this kind of film. She’s won the Volvi Cup, the highest honor at the Venice Film Festival, and she’s done a little bit of everything as an actress. She’s not called upon to do much here, but she’s clearly having fun and I love that for her. Lorenzo de Moor also makes a strong impression as the dashing Matteo, who becomes a more complicated character as the story moves on. Aziza Scott, Marco Calvani and Stella Pecollo are very effective comedic scene stealers, and the movie could’ve used more of them.

Danny Ruhlmann is our cinematographer and the camera lingers a lot on the Italian vistas, the food, the wine and the locations. And he must have done a good job because you just want to live in this movie, and it’s a bummer to walk out of the theater, back into your comparatively bland, normal life. Ryan Engle penned the screenplay, and the film is full of little things that don’t quite make sense. For instance, the fact that nobody in Matteo’s family decided to contact him sooner about this strange woman who showed up at his house, claiming to be his fiancée. Also, we learn so much about the backstory of Matteo and his family, it starts to feel a bit clunky. The film is also maybe 10 minutes too long, but that’s a nitpick that doesn’t mean much.

Is You, Me & Tuscany breaking new ground for the rom com? Absolutely not. Does it give you everything you’d want from this kind of film? I’d say it does. If Kat Coiro is able to bring back this kind of Nancy Meyers-ish rom-com vibe to cinemas, I’d say this is an undisputed success. Does You, Me & Tuscany demand to be seen in a movie theater? Not really, but at the same time I’d urge you to go anyway. Maybe meet up with some friends for cocktails beforehand and go enjoy the lush escapism of it all. Right now, I think we could all use a cinematic trip to a more beautiful place. And even if this is not really a great film, I absolutely want to see more like it in theaters and not on streaming services. It’s unabashed travelogue fluff, a throwback screwball romantic comedy that against all odds, is as delightful as a dish of gelato on a hot summer day.