Love in the Villa is another mediocre Netflix rom-com

It’s inevitably already in the Netflix top 10 after less than a day but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s any good.

Let’s consider the Netflix rom-com.

Generally cheap-to-make, often indistinguishable and almost always forgettable, the Netflix rom-com has become a genre in and of itself.

The streaming platform has observed an appetite for easygoing, escapist rom-com movies and it’s more than happy to fulfil those desires, as fleeting as they are. Especially when the genre and the audience expectations are less than demanding.

There are definitely differences in ambition and outcome when it comes to the Netflix rom-com. There are those that are more creatively driven, perhaps by virtue of the filmmaker or the higher-tier talent involved.

Something like an Always Be My Maybe isn’t your average Netflix rom-com. It starred and was written by Ali Wong and Randall Park, and had a bonkers supporting performance from Keanu Reeves.

It also had a strong perspective and contextualised itself within an Asian-American experience. In other words, it had something to say that wasn’t just, “isn’t it cute these attractive people fell in love”.

Set It Up had a zinging cast in Zoey Deutsch, Glen Powell and Lucy Liu and a playful energy that elevated its relatively predictable premise.

And For All the Boys I’ve Loved Before was a tender and sweet teen romance with a really likeable heroine.

If you like a forgettable Netflix rom-com. Picture: Riccardo Ghilardi/Netflix

Love in the Villa is not one of those Netflix rom-coms. It’s one of the other ones, in the pantheon of banality alongside A Perfect Pairing, Lovehard, Love Guaranteed, Falling Inn Love and The Last Summer.

The kind of Netflix rom-com that, gun-to-head, you wouldn’t be able to recall having seen it in three weeks’ time. A movie that 15 years earlier would have languished in the midday timeslot or on a shelf in Video Ezy.

Like its compatriots, it has a generic name that signals nothing more than its genre and a couple of actors who have a little renown as “oh, that person from that show/movie”.

Its overarching identity is a tired vibe that mumbles, “we don’t even have to try to be half-good, we know you’re going to watch it anyway because the algorithm will serve it up and you will acquiesce”.

As lazy as it is routine, Love in the Villa follows the age-old formula of two hot people meet, followed by an easily surmountable conflict and the eventual coupling. That’s not a spoiler, that’s the creed. Rare is the rom-com that deviates.

Kat Graham was on The Vampire Diaries and Tom Hopper is on The Umbrella Academy. Picture: Riccardo Ghilardi/Netflix

The aesthetically blessed cuties in question are Julie (Kat Graham from The Vampire Diaries) and Charlie (Tom Hopper from The Umbrella Academy).

Julie is an American teacher who has always dreamt of visiting the scene of her favourite story, Romeo and Juliet. She has visions of walking the cobbled streets of Verona, basking in the romance of the city’s stone walls and recreating her own moment on Juliet’s balcony.

When she’s dumped by her boyfriend right before this meticulously planned holiday, she decides to go anyway. After a horrendous journey to the self-styled “La Villa Romantica”, she’s shocked to find another occupant in residence, Charlie.

The just-happened-to-be-topless-and-well-chiselled Charlie and Julie have overlapping bookings and there’s no other room in town.

Trapped together, the two initially clash, resorting to bizarre pranks involving redirected luggage, cat allergies and a police call-out. But you can see where this is going.

When a rom-com is this rote, the differentiation is in the execution. Love in the Villa makes little effort. Graham and Hopper are genial enough, but the chemistry is more like kindling than fireworks, but it avoids the most saccharine tropes.

If you like watching two people in the same room for an hour. Picture: Riccardo Ghilardi/Netflix

The dialogue is flat, the characterisations are shallow, and despite being set in Verona, the movie spends the first hour stuck inside the villa.

Maybe it’s a misguided adherence to the title or maybe it’s the budget, but the choice to confine it to the living room of the apartment has two effects – it makes the movie feel even smaller than it is, and there’s little dynamism in its visuals because every shot looks like the one before.

By the time Julie and Charlie are let loose into the actual city with its wondrous beauty, it’s too late. You already feel as if you’ve watched two episodes of an in-studio sitcom.

So, why will Love in the Villa inevitably end up in the Netflix top 10?

Because Netflix knows it doesn’t matter whether Love in the Villa is artistically the best thing in rom-coms since When Harry Met Sally or if it’s going to join Gigli on the worst list – in all fairness, it’s somewhere in between.

Love in the Villa exists only to serve the algorithm, the same one that knows exactly which accounts among its 220 million subscribers will watch any movie with that basic premise. It’s to feed that beast.

The demand for more is a much tougher mistress than the demand for better.

Rating: 2/5

Love in the Villa is streaming now on Netflix