‘Love in the Villa’ (2022) Review: A Cheesy and Ridiculous Romance in the City of Love
Mark Steven Johnson’s Love in the Villa is a classic enemies-to-lovers that invokes the romantic comedy formulae. A young woman attends a (somewhat) authentic retelling of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” in Italy, meets a cynical romantic and falls in love. This romantic Eastern setting mixes a generous amount of cheesy dialogues and cliched moments blended into a familiar trope. Love in the Villa might have a narratively safe structure where the two romantic love interests become an unlikely pair.
Julie (Kat Graham) is a third-grade teacher obsessed with planning a romantic trip with her boyfriend of four years, Brandon (Raymond Ablack) to Verona, Italy. Their trip together is filled with two weeks of sightseeing, themed tours, and reservations with fine-dining restaurants with only just a little room left for spontaneity. Just before they depart on their romantic trip, Brandon gets cold feet and abruptly breaks up with her. Instead of spending the days at her home, Julie decides to proceed with the vacation on her own. She endures multiple flight delays at the airport, a hellish journey of turbulence and screaming babies, and loses her luggage. When she arrives at the private villa, she discovers a tall, shirtless Charlie (Tom Hopper), a British wine importer attending a conference. Julie and Charlie accidentally double-book the villa and when they aren’t able to get another lodging, these strangers are forced to stay together. Charlie and Julie decide to test their limits by pranking each other in a game of roommate wars over the private and romantic villa.
Love in the Villa is a ridiculously cliched romantic movie, and that’s all you need to keep in mind. It’s unrealistic and heavily conflictless that they barely try to make any attempt to hate each other. What the movie tries to do is aim for an erotic battle for the private villa. Julie and Charlie’s pranks are ridiculous and harmful, especially one that involves releasing cats on someone who has an allergic reaction. At one point, Julie calls the cops on Charlie and in return, he sends her luggage back to an orphanage and makes her believe that mushrooms are horse meat. Some of these pranks are completely harmless but the others are dangerous and eventually, the roommate war starts to simmer. What is meant to be a funny sequence of two enemies battling each other for the villa turns into silly and harmful, at least for one of the characters.
Regardless, Graham portrays Julie with a mix of devilish and questionable competitiveness while also embracing her character’s sweet nature and grace. She makes an excellent leading actor and provides a magnificent performance. She turns her nightmare around and makes it the most wonderful experience ever. Julie’s world and romantic expectations may be seriously unrealistic, such as shopping globally on a teacher’s salary and her reactions to travelling alone in a foreign country. Love in the Villa isn’t a movie that tries to show that aspect of travelling alone, but it could have used that dialogue. Alongside Graham, Hopper is charming, too. Their chemistry begins pranking near-strangers, which is downright silly and turns into a magnetic connection. Charlie leans into the ridiculousness of Julie’s obsession with romance, but eventually, he learns that hoping for love isn’t so bad after all.
Love in the Villa doesn’t take itself too seriously, and if you’re looking for something fun to watch during the weekend, this movie is for you. It’s a silly romantic movie that shows unrealistic moments and a hopeless romantic strolling the streets of Italy. Perhaps some romantics might see the sentimental value of this movie’s message, but that’s entirely for them to decide. Love and destiny are factors that drive Love in the Villa’s plot. Even if it has cheesy and familiar tropes, it is still entertaining.
